Dr. Ray Arsenault, the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, is one of the country’s most respected scholars on the South.  The documentary based on his acclaimed book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice won three Emmys and a George Foster Peabody Award.  Among his other acclaimed books are The Wild Ass of the Ozarks: Jeff Davis and the Social Bases of Southern Politics and St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888 – 1950.  He co-edited with Roy Peter Clark The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960 – 1968.

Previous to joining USF St. Petersburg in 1980, Dr. Arsenault taught at the University of Minnesota and Brandeis University, where he received his PhD.  He holds his BA from Princeton.  He has lectured across the country and around the world and has served as a consultant to numerous museums, including the National Civil Rights Museum and the Rosa Parks Museum.  He received the Nelson Poynter Civil Liberties Award in 2003.

Book-signing follows Dr. Arsenault’s lecture.