Patricia A. Sullivan

Patricia A. Sullivan is the William Arthur Fairey II Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of South Carolina’s McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. She specializes in 20th-century U.S. history with a focus on African American experiences, race relations, and the Civil Rights Movement.

• Ph.D., Emory University

Her research explores the intersection of race, politics, and democracy, particularly during transformative eras in American history. She has authored influential works such as Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement and Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White (2021), which examines Robert Kennedy’s engagement with civil rights struggles.

Current projects include revisiting Civil Rights, Race, and Politics from the 1930s to the 1960s and completing a biographical study of historian C. Vann Woodward. She co-founded the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture and has co-directed NEH-sponsored Summer Institutes at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for over two decades.

• William Arthur Fairey II Professorship

Her teaching includes a new course, "The Making of Contemporary America: US History from the 1960s to the Present," reflecting her commitment to integrating civil rights history into academic curricula.