Otis A. Singletary

Otis Arnold Singletary (October 31, 1921 – September 21, 2003) was an American

Singletary was born October 31, 1921, in Gulfport, Mississippi. He received his B.A. from Millsaps College in 1947 and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Louisiana State University in 1949 and 1954, respectively.

Academic career

Singletary was an instructor in Louisiana State University's Extension Division from 1949 to 1951, followed by a position with the

He served as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1961 to 1966, with a leave of absence from October, 1964, until January, 1966 to head the federal Job Corps. In 1968, he returned to Texas to serve as executive vice chancellor for academic affairs in the University of Texas System.

President of University of Kentucky

In August 1969, Singletary became president of the University of Kentucky. Assuming his executive responsibilities during a period of campus turmoil kindled by

Among his writings was Negro Militia and Reconstruction (1957), a treatise on the mixed race paramilitary units employed in the south during the post Civil War period.[1] This volume examines the use, racial mixture and failures surrounding a group of civil servants who faced a high rate of violence.

Singletary's The Mexican War (University of Chicago Press, 1960) was described as "the best short account of the Mexican War yet written" in a review by Thomas Harry Williams in The Journal of Modern History.^[2]

Legacy

In the same year of his retirement, the University of Kentucky's Singletary Center for the Arts was named in his honor. Currently, the university offers the Singletary scholarship, which is the highest attainable undergraduate scholarship at the institution.

He died September 20, 2003, at his home in Lexington, Kentucky. His funeral was held four days later at the Singletary Center for the Arts.

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