Deborah Trefts
Staff Writer
Historians and biographers who write widely acclaimed books are world-wide educators.
Over time, those who also teach at the college or university level inform large numbers of students who venture out into the “real world” strengthened by and ready to apply their newfound knowledge.
Raymond O. Arsenault — the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History Emeritus, better known to USFSP students as “the lion of the campus,” at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg — has succeeded in both endeavors.
While he has written eight scholarly books, edited or co-edited several others and taught a broad range of topics, civil rights — and the lack thereof — has mattered greatly to him since childhood.
As part of the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum, Arsenault returns to the grounds to deliver a speech titled “Marian Anderson and the Sound of Freedom” at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Hall of Philosophy.
In February 2022 — in honor of Black History Month and Anderson’s 125th birthday — the documentary film “Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hands” premiered.
“Marian Anderson,” directed by Emmy and Peabody Award winner Rita Coburn for “American Masters” (the PBS television series produced by WNET in New York City), featured both Arsenault and his 2009 book, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America.
His book on Anderson is part of what he calls his civil rights “quartet.” It followed Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice and it preceded Arthur Ashe: A Life and John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community.
As Arsenault stated in his interview with Bryant Monteilh of Southwest Florida’s NPR affiliate, WGCU, which was broadcast on Feb. 28, 2024, “You can’t really understand American History without understanding African Americans within that. I mean, it’s the central dilemma of American history. Slavery leading to Jim Crow and racism. When Blacks were oppressed and pushed down, whites were pushed up.”
Freedom Riders has won numerous prestigious honors, awards and prizes. It also served as the foundation for the “American Experience” documentary film, “Freedom Riders.” Described as “the story behind civil rights activists who challenged segregation in the American South,” it aired on PBS in February 2012.
“It’s the first time ‘American Experience’ ever did a film on one book,” Arsenault said. “I worked with Stanley Nelson, who directed it, for three years.”
“Freedom Riders” was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and caught Oprah Winfrey’s attention. Arsenault and 178 of the Freedom Riders who were alive in 2011 appeared on her television show.
This film also won three Emmys (for writing, editing and documentary excellence) and a 2012 George Peabody Award.
“That really changed my life,” Arsenault said. “I decided to devote the rest of my career to (civil rights).”
Although he received the Florida Historical Society’s Dorothy Dodd Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, his achievements were, and still are, ongoing.
In 2019, following the publication of Arthur Ashe: A Life — which he said took him nine years to write — he received the Florida Humanities Council’s Lifetime Achievement in Writing Award.
On Wednesday, Arsenault will give a talk on Ashe as part of the African American Heritage House’s 2025 Chautauqua Speaker Series.
“It’s the 50th anniversary of his Wimbledon win over Jimmy Connors,” he said.
For this same AAHH speaker series, Arsenault spoke to a large audience situated in and around the Hall of Philosophy on Aug. 14, 2024, about John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community. In February, it earned him the Florida Book Awards 2024 Gold Medal for General Nonfiction.
When he retired in December 2020 after 40 years at USFSP, the Tampa Bay Times published articles written by Bay correspondent Colette Bancroft showing that he was a “beloved teacher and campus leader.”
In the article “Ray Arsenault’s USFSP students talk about their teacher,” Bancroft asked five of his students for their comments about him. Peyton Jones, who at the time served as an adjunct professor at USFSP, was particularly poignant:
“Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the ‘Beloved Community,’ a world genuinely committed to peace, justice, equality and human dignity. Ray taught me about the idea of the Beloved Community. In the classroom. During workshops on Gandhian nonviolence. On a bus tour through the hallowed grounds of the civil rights movement. In his living room, going over my dissertation line by line, sentence by sentence. Ray inspired me to strive for a life of academic rigor and civic engagement. He taught me that theory is nothing without practice. That writing about the world is only a small part of what it takes to meaningfully change it.”
Especially when considering that the process of rigorous research, analysis, writing and rewriting necessary for completing scholarly, fact- and evidence-based books and articles that are accepted by well-regarded publishers is in competition for time with the myriad responsibilities associated with educating undergraduate and graduate students, this is high praise.
“Every book is like writing a Ph.D. dissertation,” Arsenault said.
He designed and taught 65 different courses, developed new curricula, co-created USFSP’s Florida Studies program, mentored generations of students and participated meaningfully in internal committees and external organizations and academic associations.
“At USF St. Pete, there are a lot of older students,” Arsenault said. “They’ll walk through a wall for you. I taught almost all of my classes at night. When I arrived, I was 32, and the average student was 33. I taught one course on World War II and had eight regular students and nine (veterans).”
As a public historian who has received numerous prominent civil rights, human rights and social justice awards, his knowledge and influence extend far beyond classrooms, libraries and bookstores.
A long-time community activist, Arsenault has consulted for a number of national and regional historical museums and organizations, including the Carter G. Woodson African-American History of Florida Museum; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and National Museum of African American History and Culture; the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; the Rosa Parks Museum; the Freedom Rides Museum; the National Civil Rights Museum; and the National Park Service.
He also chaired the Organization of American Historians’ Committee on Academic Freedom from 2013 to 2016. And for over 35 years, he was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida Board of Directors, serving as its president from 1998 to 2000.
“I was working on demagogues early in my career, and that was fascinating,” Arsenault said. “But then I wanted to work on redeeming characters. Marian Anderson was a reluctant activist; the same with Ashe. They both did courageous, courageous things. … I think Marian Anderson is one of the most remarkable figures in American history.”
