James W. Silver was born in Rochester, New York, in 1907. He received the B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina in 1927 and his Ph.D. degree from Vanderbilt University in 1935. In 1936, he was appointed to the history faculty at the University of Mississippi. He served in the Red Cross in the Pacific for a time in World War II. He was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa, member of the Mississippi State Historical Society and a member of the Southern Historical Association.

This collection contains a copy of Mississippi: The Closed Society, by John W. Silver, given before the Southern Historical Association, Asheville, North Carolina, November 7, 1963.