Derek Catsam

An Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Derek Catsam has written extensively on US and African history, politics and sports. His most recent publications include a chapter on civil rights in A Companion to John F. Kennedy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) and Freedom’s Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides (U P of Kentucky, 2011), which was praised as “a cut above most civil rights narratives” by the American Historical Review. Derek, who appeared in the award-winning PBS American Experience film Freedom Riders (2011) and serves as Reviews Editor of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies (Routledge), is also the author of Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan’s Diary of the 2004 Season (New Academia, 2005), an intensely personal record of the most glorious baseball season of the author’s life. He received his BA from Williams College, his MA from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte and his PhD from the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University. Derek is currently working on “When We Are Tired We Shall Rest:” Bus Boycotts in the US and South Africa (under contract with the University of Georgia Press) and on The Most Important Day: June 11, 1963 and the Making of Racial Justice in America, which looks at how a series of events occurring within hours of each other dramatically altered the landscape of the Civil Rights Movement.