2026 W.E.B. Du Bois Award Recipient: Dr. Thomas Durant

 

DR. THOMAS J. DURANT, JR., is a native of Mansfield, Louisiana. He obtained his early education in the DeSoto Parish Training School for Negroes. He earned his bachelor’s degree in animal science at Grambling State University, master’s degree in agricultural education at Tuskegee University, and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in St. Lucia (WI), 1963-1965. His professional career includes Professor of Sociology at Virginia State University (1977-1978), Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Louisiana State University (1978-2009), and Professor of Higher Education at Jackson State University (2011-2018).

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He is the founding Director of the African and African American Studies Department at Louisiana State University. His teaching and research interests include plantation culture, rural sociology, social inequality, criminology, and African Diaspora studies. He is author or co-author of seven books: Plantation Society and Race Relations: The Origins of Inequality; Our Roots Run Deep: A History of The River Road African American Museum; A History of the Charity Hospitals of Louisiana: A Study of Poverty, Politics, Public Health and the Public Interest; A View from the Inside…Thirty-Six Years of Desegregation; A Stone of Hope: Rising above Slavery, Jim Crow, and Poverty In Glendora, Mississippi; Rosedown Baptist Church, Rising Above A Plantation Heritage; and Deja Views: Black Baby Boomers Perspectives in The Era of Civil Rights. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals.

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He has received numerous academic and community service awards, including presentation at the Oxford University Round Table; President of the Mid-South Sociological Association; Peace Corps Beyond War Peace Award; African & African American Studies Department Transcendence Award; Urban League Research Award; LSU Fulbright Scholars Award; YMCA Community Service Award; MSSA Teaching Award; McNair Research Mentoring Award; African Students Advisors Award; Basic Values Community Drug Prevention Award; LSU Legend Award; Baton Rouge Links Legends Award; Links Role Model Award; A.P. Tureaud Alumni Award; Kiwanis Community Service Award; LSU Outstanding Teaching Award; Presidential Award of the Mid-South Sociological Association; Rockefeller Student Research Advisor Award; Omicron Delta Kappa Leadership Award; and International Service Award.

 

 

He has traveled extensively in Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, North America and the Caribbean. As a Pan-Africanist, he has work experience in 12 African countries and the Caribbean. He is an entrepreneur, speaker, and community volunteer, who currently lives in Baton Rouge, LA.

 

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