Biography

Thomas J. Durant Jr., Ph.D., author, entrepreneur, scholar, speaker, and community volunteer, is emeritus professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University. He has published three books (Plantation Society and Race Relations: The Origins of Inequality; Our Roots Run Deep: History of the River Road African-American Museum; and The Charity Hospitals of Louisiana: A Story of Poverty, Politics, Public Health, and Public Interest) and numerous articles in scholarly journals.

Schedule

2:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.
State Capitol, Senate Committee Room A
Book Talk
A View from the Inside

3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Bookselling Tent
Book Signing

A View from the Inside...Thirty-Six Years of Desegregation

The author provides a detailed account of his journey from a small racially segregated town in north Louisiana to a large predominately white university, where he became engaged in the racial desegregation movement, during his 36-year tenure as a professor. Based on personal observations, experiences, documents, and reports, the book reveals how desegregation policies, programs, and events, and the actions of African American students, faculty, and staff, shaped the course of desegregation, cultural diversity, race relations, and cultural transformation of the university. This book fills a gap in the history of desegregation of a historically white public university that has not, heretofore, been revealed. - Joyce Marie Jackson, Ph.D. Director, African & African American Studies | Professor, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University