LaWanda Cox, who died February 2 at age 95, was a historian whose revisionist writings on Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction argued that freedom and civil rights were important issues in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Her work stood in contrast to historians who claimed that the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Confederacy but not in the northern border states, was a cynical wartime expedient. Cox also argued that the rights of black workers and voters were indeed at the heart of debates during Reconstruction, rather than excuses for retribution against the South in the wake of the war.

“She made many important contributions to Reconstruction literature,” a Columbia University history professor who specializes in the same period, Eric Foner, said. “Her defense of Lincoln was an important contribution.”

Cox’s “Lincoln and Black Freedom” (1981) remains in print.

“She made an indelible mark on Lincoln scholarship,” said Joseph Garrera, president of the Lincoln Group of New York, a scholarly organization. “She could understand complexity, the great balancing act of Lincoln’s.”

Cox was born in rural Washington State and attended the University of Oregon, Smith College, and Berkeley, where she earned a Ph.D. in 1941 with a dissertation focused on migratory labor in the South during reconstruction.

She and her husband, John H. Cox, also a historian, moved to New York in 1941, where he took a position at City College and she went to work at Hunter College. She remained there until her retirement in 1971.

In 1963, Cox published “Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America,” in which she argued that Republicans were determined to secure basic civil rights for former slaves. She highlighted the Republicans’ conflict with President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, who remained committed to white supremacy. The book won the American Historical Association’s John H. Dunning Prize for outstanding historical writing by a younger scholar.

In “Reconstruction, the Negro, and the New South” (1971), Cox took the story forward as former slaves encountered resistance to their new-found civil rights. Her work tended to support a more idealistic vision than had become the conventional wisdom among historians, who had tended to view Reconstruction as a misguided, if not tragic, era in American history.

“Lincoln and Black Freedom” was effectively the capstone to her career. Looking back at the book in a review essay in 1987, the historian Gabor S. Boritt wrote, “Mrs. Cox struck a most sturdy blow for Lincoln and liberty.” Among those praising it in print were historian James McPherson and Governor Cuomo.

Cox remained active as a scholar, chairing an annual colloquium on emancipation and its aftermath through the 1980s. She was struck with blindness and ceased working in the early 1990s.

In 2003, Mr. Garrera visited her at her home on Central Park West. “Well, don’t be late,” she told him “If possible, bring a good bottle of bourbon.”

He found her cheerful and somewhat surprised and gratified that scholars still consult “Lincoln and Black Freedom.”

LaWanda Fenlason Cox
Born September 24, 1909, at Hoquim, Wash.;died February 2 at her home in Manhattan; predeceased by her husband, John H. Cox, in 1975.