Milton Meltzer (May 8, 1915 — September 19, 2009) was an American historian and author best known for his history nonfiction books on Jewish, African-American and American history. Since the 1950s, he was a leading author of history books in the children's literature and young adult literature genres, having written more than 100 books.
Meltzer was born in Worcester, Massachusetts to Benjamin and Mary Meltzer, semi-literate immigrants from Austria-Hungary. One of three sons, Meltzer was the only child to graduate high school, furthering his education at Columbia University from 1932 to 1936, he had to drop out of college before graduating to support his family after his father died of cancer. Meltzer became a writer for the Works Project Administration, a program designed by the Federal Government to provide jobs for the millions of unemployed during the Great Depression.
Meltzer wed Hilda "Hildy" Balinky on June 22, 1941. After serving in the Army during World War II, Meltzer was a writer for the CBS radio broadcasting network and later a public relations executive for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. While traveling the country for Pfizer, Meltzer did research at historical societies, local archives and museums and collected nearly 1,000 illustrations to begin a career writing history books with a focus on social justice. Meltzer co-authored with Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes, A Pictorial History of the Negro in America published in 1956.
The Meltzers had two daughters and two grandsons. Hildy Meltzer died in 2009. Meltzer most recently lived in New York City where he passed away at the age of 94 from esophageal cancer.
Meltzer's books often chronicled struggles for freedom, such as the American Revolution, the antislavery movement of the nineteenth century United States, and the movement against antisemitism. He wrote several biographies, including ones of Langston Hughes and Thomas Jefferson, and though most of his books are nonfiction, he wrote at least one historical novel, The Underground Man, about a white abolitionist in the 1800s United States who is imprisoned for helping escaped slaves. Meltzer won numerous awards, both for individual books and his lifetime achievement, including the 2001 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal.
Meltzer was an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a lecturer at universities in the United States and England, as well as professional meetings and seminars. He did work on various documentary films such as History of the American Negro and Five.
