Professor Emeritus
Email: mclaurinm

     Melton McLaurin received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina in 1967, and taught at the University of Southern Alabama prior to joining the UNCW faculty in 1977. He is the author or co-author of seven books and numerous articles on various aspects of the history of the American South. His most recent works are Celia, A Slave (University of Georgia Press, 1991) and You Wrote My Life, Lyrical Themes in Country Music (Gordon and Breach, 1992). His current research interests are autobiography and history and race relations in the era of segregation.

     Writer/director of video documentary The Marines of Montford Point: Fighting for Freedom (2006) on the nation's first African American Marines and narrated by Louis Gossett, Jr.  Dr. McLaurin also authored The Marines of Montford Point: Americ's First Black Marines, published by UNC Press ( 2007), which contains aditional material on the Montford Point Marine.