Francis Sheldon Hackney, known as Sheldon Hackney (December 5, 1933 – September 12, 2013) was a prominent U.S. educator. Hackney was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1933. He was the Boies Professor of United States History at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating Vanderbilt University, Hackney earned his Ph.D. in American History at Yale University, where he worked with eminent Southern historian C. Vann Woodward.