LaWanda Fenlason Cox (1909–2005) was a pioneering historian of the American Civil War and the period of Reconstruction.
Cox studied at Smith College with Merle Curti a social historian, and at Berkeley with John Schuster Taylor an economist.
She remained an active historian until the loss of her sight, in 1989; she died on February 2, 2005, in New York City.
She was the author of several major works including, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (1963) which she wrote with her husband, John H. Cox; both shared the 1964 Dunning Prize for this work.
She also wrote on her own: Reconstruction: The Negro, and the New South (1973), and also Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study of Presidential Leadership (1981).