Dr. Paul Ortiz He/Him
American Historian and Best-Selling Author
Fields of expertise:
Dr. Paul Ortiz is a PEN award-winning author and historian. He served as a consultant and featured narrator for the PBS series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. titled: The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song(opens in new tab). He was director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and professor of history at the University of Florida from 2008 to 2023.
Professor Ortiz was the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program beginning the fall semester, 2008. Under his leadership, SPOHP received several national academic awards. He helped to raise more than two million dollars in grants, donations, and contracts for the program. In an external review of SPOHP conducted in 2020, the Doris Duke Charitable Trust noted that, “The program’s social justice research methodologies are the focus of scholars and oral history programs across the globe.”
Under Professor Ortiz’ leadership, SPOHP logistically supported hundreds of undergraduates and graduate students who have embarked on oral history field work worldwide. SPOHP-supported students have presented their research at academic conferences, community organizing workshops, and public history panels. SPOHP alumni have become public-facing professors at institutions such as UCLA, Emory University, Texas A & M, Virginia Tech, and the University of Kentucky. Undergraduate alumni have parlayed the research skills they learned at SPOHP to matriculate to elite law schools including Duke, Harvard, Howard, Florida A&M, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, UF and many others.
Paul’s publications include Emancipation Betrayed(opens in new tab) (University of California Press), a history of the Black Freedom struggle in Florida, and Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South(opens in new tab) (New Press), which went into its fourth printing in 2014.
His book, An African American and Latinx History of the United States,(opens in new tab) was identified by Bustle as one of “Ten Books About Race to Read Instead of Asking a Person of Color to Explain Things to You(opens in new tab).” Fortune Magazine listed it as one of the “10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States(opens in new tab).” An African American and Latinx History has been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the National Anti-Racist Book Festival, and the National Anti-Racist Teach-In among other venues. Since 2018, he has given invited lectures at Harvard, UC-Berkeley, Northwestern, UCLA, Duke, New York University, University of Central Florida, Powell’s Books(opens in new tab), Busboys and Poets Books(opens in new tab), Microsoft, Wayfair and many other venues.
His latest book is a co-edited volume with Wesley Hogan that features many of the leading scholar activists in the United States, titled: People Power: History, Organizing and Larry Goodwyn’s Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century(opens in new tab).
Dr. Ortiz was president of the Oral History Association(opens in new tab) for the 2014-2015 term, exactly forty years after our program’s founder, Dr. Samuel Proctor served in the same capacity.
He also served as president of the United Faculty of Florida-UF(opens in new tab) (NEA/AFT/FEA/AFL-CIO).
Professor Ortiz was the faculty adviser for CHISPAS, Por Colombia, and UF NextGen. He was awarded the 2013 César E. Chávez Action and Commitment Award by the Florida Education Association(opens in new tab), AFL-CIO. The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program received the Oral History Association’s 2013 Stetson Kennedy Vox Populi Award for outstanding achievement in using oral history to create a more humane and just world. He was the recipient of the Rosa Parks Quiet Courage Award in 2014 for contributions to civil rights and social justice. Ortiz received the Resource Center for Nonviolence’s(opens in new tab) inaugural Inspirator Award in 2020 for contributions to scholarship and organizing.
Paul has served on the editorial boards for the University of North Carolina’s Latinx Histories book series; Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies(opens in new tab) as well as for Palgrave Studies in Oral History, Palgrave Macmillan Books(opens in new tab). In 2020-21, he was as an expert reviewer for the State of Connecticut’s new public school curriculum on Black and Latino Studies. He has been a Post-Doctoral Faculty Mentor for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation(opens in new tab) as well as for the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program(opens in new tab).
Professor Ortiz received his Ph.D. in history from Duke University(opens in new tab) in 2000. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Evergreen State College(opens in new tab) in 1990 in History and Political Economy after earning his Associate of Arts Degree from Olympic Community College(opens in new tab) in 1988.
Ortiz is a third-generation military veteran. He served in the 82nd Airborne Division and 7th Special Forces Group in Central America in the mid-1980s as a radio operator and trainer on mobile teams. He is the recipient of numerous medals and citations including the US Armed Forces Humanitarian Service Medal for meritorious action in the wake of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia in November, 1985. He received an honorable discharge the following year at the rank of Sergeant/E5.
