William Sturkey is an historian of Modern American, African American, and Southern History with a particular research focus on race in the American South, working-class African American communities, the Civil Rights Movement, and the relationship between racial minorities and state and federal governments. His first book was an edited collection of the newspapers, essays, and poems produced by young black Freedom School students during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. His second book, currently in progress, examines the effects of modernization and the expansion of the liberal state on Southern Jim Crow and black activism. Dr. Sturkey has also begun researching his next major book project, a study of the experiences of Mexican American Vietnam War veterans.
