Steven Lawson
Steven F. Lawson received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. From 1972 to 1992, he taught History at the University of South Florida, Tampa and was chair of the Department from 1983 to1986. He was Professor and Head of the History Department at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro from 1992 to 1998. From 1998-2009, he was a Professor of American History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, where he is now Professor Emeritus. In 2009-2010, he was a Senior Mellon Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University in England.
Professor Lawson has written Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969; In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965-1982; Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941, 3rd Edition; Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968; To Secure These Rights: The Report of President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle, and. One America in the 21st Century: The Report of President Bill Clinton’s Initiative on Race. Lawson has served as an expert witness in several voting rights cases, and he participated as an academic advisor to the award-winning PBS Television documentary history of the civil rights movement, “Eyes on the Prize,” parts one and two.