Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. A graduate of Princeton and Brandeis, he is the author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, which was named an Editor's Choice by the TBR, a Best Books selection by the Washington Post, and won the Owsley Prize of the Southern Historical Association as the best book published in the field of Southern history in 2006.