Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History emeritus at the University of South Florida.  A graduate of Princeton and Brandeis Universities, he has also taught at Brandeis, the University of Minnesota, the University of Chicago, and as a Fulbright lecturer in France. One of the nation’s leading civil rights historians, Arsenault is the author of several acclaimed and prize-winning books, including Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America, and Arthur Ashe, A Life.  The 2011 PBS American Experience documentary Freedom Riders, based on his book, won three Emmys and a George Peabody Award. He is currently writing a biography of the civil rights icon John Lewis.