LAKELAND, Fla. (Jan. 27, 2009) — Florida Southern College’s Center for Florida History welcomes Dr. Paul Ortiz, author, historian and University of Florida professor, to the Florida Lecture Series on Feb. 5. Ortiz discusses his award-winning book, “Emancipation Betrayed,” which examines the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow in America. Ortiz’s visit coincides with the College’s recognition of Black History Month throughout February. The lecture will start at 7 p.m. in the William M. Hollis Seminar Room of the Thad Buckner Building on the FSC campus. The event is free and open to the public. A book signing follows the lecture.

“We are delighted to have Paul Ortiz with us for his first visit to Lakeland after becoming head of the Oral History program at the University of Florida,” said James Denham, professor of history and director of FSC’s Center for Florida History. “He is a great speaker and one of the leading experts in the black freedom struggle in the South and Florida. His program will be a great way for us to commemorate Black History Month.”

Ortiz is associate professor of history and director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. He holds degrees from Evergreen State College and Duke University, where he earned his Ph.D. Before joining the UF faculty in August 2008, Ortiz taught at the University of California-Santa Cruz. His book, “Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920” (2005), received the Florida Historical Society’s Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Book Prize. While at Duke, Ortiz was research coordinator for “Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,” a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored project that received the Oral History Association’s Outstanding Award in 1996. He was co-editor with William H. Chafe of “Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South” (2001), which received the Southern Regional Council’s 2002 Lillian Smith Book Prize.

About the Florida Lecture Series
The Florida Lecture Series is produced by the Center for Florida History under the direction of Dr. James M. Denham. The program brings speakers to the Lakeland campus who approach the issue of “Florida Life and Culture” from a wide range of disciplines, including history, public affairs, law, sociology, criminology, anthropology, literature, music and art. Its overall objective is to create an opportunity for members of the community, faculty, and student body to listen to, interact with and learn from leading scholars and specialists of the state’s history and culture.