Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Who Inspired the Clintons and Was Honored by Obama Fatally Struck by Car in Rhode Island Parking Lot

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian was fatally hit by a car in the parking lot of a Rhode Island grocery store on Sunday.

Gordon Wood professor of history emeritus, Brown University, and author of The Creation of the American Republic, Radicalism of the American Revolution, was hit by a car in Shaw’s parking lot in East Providence, Rhode Island.

He was 92 years old.

In 2011, Barack Obama honored Gordon Wood by awarding him with the National Humanities Medal.

From 2011, Gordon Wood receives the National Humanities Medal.

Find more of his C-SPAN appearances here: https://t.co/rnDPKOfHou

RIP. pic.twitter.com/FGR6hDCg5Q

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 8, 2026

The Clintons were inspired by Gordon Wood and referenced his work.

Hillary Clinton and Gordon Wood were both interviewed for a Netflix docuseries, The American Experiment.

CBS News reported::

Gordon S. Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author who was honored by former President Barack Obama at the White House, has died after he was hit by a car in a Rhode Island supermarket parking lot.

The 92-year-old from Concord, Massachusetts was struck in a Shaw’s parking lot in East Providence on Sunday morning. Wood was taken to a hospital where he later died. East Providence police said the driver is cooperating with investigators and not facing any charges at this time.

Wood was a scholar on the American Revolution. Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2011 for “for scholarship that provides insight into the founding of the nation and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.” He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution.”

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns told the Associated Press that Wood was a “teacher of generations of students and other historians.”