Experts: Civil Rights

Beatty is an assistant professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department in the College of Education. He teaches courses in the undergraduate leadership certificate and conducts research with the Leadership and Learning Research Center.

His research foci includes exploring the intersections of gender and race in leadership education, leadership development of students of color on historically white college campuses and global leadership education for undergraduate students. His recent publications center on topics that include: supporting undergraduate Black women through Sister Circles, gains in leadership capacity for high achieving Black men leaders and supporting undergraduate men in leadership education through liberatory pedagogy.

Houck is FSU’s Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies in the College of Communication and Information. Houck, who earned a doctorate in communication at Penn State University, offers expertise on political advertising, speech-making and news coverage. He’s also an expert on the American civil rights movement, war rhetoric, propaganda and media campaigns.

Houck is one of the nation’s leading experts on Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder in the Mississippi Delta helped launch the civil rights movement. Houck helped create and lead the Emmett Till Memory Project, which developed a 21st-century digital historical record of the people, places and episodes associated with Till’s murder and legacy. Houck coauthored “Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press” with Matthew A. Grindy.

Houck is collaborating with FSU Libraries’ Division of Special Collections and Archives to continue to build the only existing Emmett Till Archive. The archive  houses several collections from leading scholars, filmmakers, historians and activists, many of which are digitized for a global audience.

Professor Laroche directs and teaches in the Gender and Family Justice Clinic within our Public Interest Law Center. She conducts research and presentations on criminal justice reform, family law, gender, implicit bias, access to justice and legal resources, voting rights restoration for people with felonies (Florida’s Amendment 4), and diversity in the legal profession.