Willie Lee Rose was born Willie Lee Nichols in Moneta, Virginia in 1927. She attended Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA while it was the women's college of the University of Virginia, and she received a BA in history in 1947. After earning her undergraduate degree, Rose taught at Elkridge High School in Elkridge, MD. She married William G. Rose in 1949, and was married to him until his death in 1985.

Dr. Rose entered graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in 1955, where she was a student of historian C. Vann Woodward, and she earned her PhD in American history in 1962. She turned her PhD dissertation into a book, "Rehearsal for Reconstruction," that examined the experience of formerly enslaved people and the communities around them in Port Royal, South Carolina during the American Civil War. The book was published in 1964 and, as noted by William B. Crawley, Jr., "sparked the beginning of a markedly different interpretation of [Reconstruction], a view that prevails to this day" ("Willie Lee Rose, 1927-2018: An Appreciation.")

Dr. Rose was a member of the history faculty at the University of Virginia beginning in 1964. In 1973, she returned to Johns Hopkins as a professor in the history department from which she graduated over a decade earlier. During her time at UVA, she led a report for the American Historical Association (AHA) on the status of women in the historical profession, which was published in 1970 and became known as the "Rose Report." At their 1990 annual meeting, the AHA awarded Dr. Rose the Troyer Steele Anderson prize and hailed the significance of the Rose report in a citation read by Susan M. Socolow, which can be found in the 1990 Annual Meeting Highlights: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-1991/1990-annual-meeting-highlights.

In 1977-1978, Dr. Rose spent the academic year as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth visiting professor of American history at Oxford University. In August of 1978, she had a stroke that severely limited her ability to teach, research, and write for the rest of her career. Dr. Rose passed away in Baltimore at the age of 91 in 2018.

Bibliography

AHA Staff. "1990 Annual Meeting Highlights" Perspectives on History: the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association February 1, 1991. Accessed July 29, 2022. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-1991/1990-annual-meeting-highlights

Crawley, Jr., William B. "Willie Lee Rose, 1927-2018: An Appreciation." University of Mary Washington Magazine. Fall/Winter 2018. Accessed July 29, 2022. https://magazine.umw.edu/fallwinter2018/departments/willie-lee-rose-1927-2018-an-appreciation/

Hub staff report. "Renowned Johns Hopkins slavery scholar Willie Lee Rose dies at 91." HUB. June 25, 2018. Accessed July 29, 2022. https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/06/25/willie-lee-rose-obituary/

Smith, Harrison. "Willie Lee Rose, influential historian of slavery and Reconstruction, dies at 91." The Washington Post. June 27, 2018. Accessed July 29, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/willie-lee-rose-influential-historian-of-slavery-and-reconstruction-dies-at-91/2018/06/26/056db41c-794a-11e8-aeee-4d04c8ac6158_story.html.