He earned his doctorate at the University of Memphis, where he was the recipient of the Ruth and Harry Woodbury Fellowship in Southern History and the Major L. Wilson Graduate Paper Prize. He has spoken at conferences in England and Ireland, at the Society for Military History’s national conference, and at the annual Conference of Tennessee Historians. He was the keynote speaker at the Phi Alpha Theta regional conference and at the 41st annual conference of the Arkansas Political Science Association. The Arkansas HistoricalAssociation recently awarded him the 2013 James L. Foster and Billy W. Beason Award for his dissertation on Arkansas history, entitled “The Battle of Little Rock.” A former Army National Guardsman and Little Rock public school teacher, he is married and has two children, and currently serves as the education minister at the Cloverdale church of Christ in Searcy, Arkansas.