Free Seminar – A Tale of Two Cities, History, Intrigue and Gossip

Do history, intrigue and gossip make your ears perk up? If so, join well-known authors and local historians, Ray Arsenault and Gary Mormino as they take us on a “tour” of favorite (or not so favorite) St. Petersburg and Tampa buildings and people, past and present. This Beach Drive Forum, A Tale of Two Cities: St. Petersburg and Tampa, Then and Now, is scheduled for 6 to 8 PM on Wednesday, April 26 at First Presbyterian Church, 701 Beach Dr. NE, St. Pete. Everyone is welcome.
Ray Arsenault, a specialist in the political, social, and environmental history of the American South, was educated at Princeton University (B.A. 1969) and Brandeis University from which he received his PH.D. in 1981. He has taught at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg campus since 1980 and is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program with Gary Mormino. Arsenault wrote about the 1961 Freedom Rides in 2006. His work on the critical event in the Civil Rights Movement became the basis of the 2010 documentary, Freedom Riders. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in an episode dedicated to Freedom Riders.
Gary Mormino is an American historian, author, frequent contributor to the Tampa Bay Times, the Frank E. Duckwall Professor of History Emeritus, and past director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has taught at USF since 1977. Mormino’s books include Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida, published in 2005; Immigrants on the Hill, 1986, and The Immigrant World of Ybor City, 1987. He received the Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing in 2014.

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