DR. HARRY A. KERSEY, JR. (1935-2021)

FAU LOSES AN INSTITUTIONAL PIONEER AND LEADING SCHOLAR OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY

FAU History Department professor and pioneer, Dr. Harry A. Kersey, Jr., passed away on Sunday, November 7, 2021, at age 86. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was raised, on April 30, 1935, to Harry A. Kersey, Sr. and Margaret
Mozley Kersey. He received his BA in Political Science and MEd from the University of Florida.

After serving active duty as a US Air Force intelligence officer from 1958 to 1961, Dr. Kersey went on to earn his PhD in American Educational and Social History from the University of Illinois in 1965. The following year he moved to Boca
Raton, Florida to teach first in the College of Education and then the Department of History, at the newly opened Florida Atlantic University, where he remained until his retirement in 2003. During that time, he received tenure and was promoted to associate
professor in 1966, and to full professor in 1971. Immediately upon his retirement he attained emeritus status.

A widely published author, Dr. Kersey’s first books, John Milton Gregory and University of Illinois (1968) and
Florida Education in the 70s (co-authored with Neal E. Justin, 1973), emerged out of his doctoral research in the history of American education, including that of indigenous peoples. Soon, Dr. Kersey expanded his research agenda to encompass Native American history more broadly, especially the Seminoles, which resulted in several articles and books, including
Pelts, Plumes, and Hides: White Traders among the Seminole Indians, 1870-1930 (1975), The Florida Seminoles and the New Deal, 1933-1942 (1989), and An Assumption of Sovereignty: Social and Political Transformation among the Florida Seminoles, 1953-1979 (1996). His most recent work, Seminole Voices: Reflections on Their Changing Society, 1976-2000 (co-authored with Julian Pleasants, 2010), won the silver medal in non-fiction from the 2010 Florida Book Awards, the Florida Historical Society’s Moore Award for ethnic history, and the Proctor Prize for best oral history.Buffalo Tiger: A Life in the Everglades (2002), a biography he co-authored with legendary Miccosukee Indian leader Buffalo Tiger, received both the James Horgan Book Award and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Prize from the Florida Historical Society in 2003. Dr. Kersey also authored The Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale – A Pioneer Family of New River (2003), which looks at this prominent family’s role in the early history of Fort Lauderdale.

Recognized as an expert on the history and culture of Florida Indians, Dr. Kersey worked extensively with the Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes in various capacities. He served as a consultant to the Seminole Tribe in its land claims and
water rights cases. The Miccosukee Tribe also engaged him in their efforts to overturn PL 83-280 (a federal law that allowed states to assume jurisdiction over reservation Indians) and secure retrocession of jurisdiction in
criminal cases from state to tribal courts. He has also appearedas an expert witness in federal court cases involving Indian civil rights issues.

For a decade Dr. Kersey served as a member of the Florida Governor’s Council on Indian Affairs, a commission that advises the state’s chief executive on policy matters affecting native peoples. By law, the Council’s membership is comprised
of two-thirds Indians and one-third at-large members. At the request of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, three successive governors appointed Dr. Kersey as an at-large member between 1978 and 1988.

In addition to eleven books, Dr. Kersey authored or co-authored over 75 scholarly articles and book chapters. In 1987, he received the Arthur W. Thompson Prize, awarded by the Florida Historical Society for the best article on Florida
history. Eleven years later he received both the DAR National History Medal and the American Association for State and Local History’s Award of Merit for “contributions to the understanding of Florida history.”

Dr. Kersey received numerous research grants and contracts from agencies including the American Philosophical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian, the Bureau
of Indian Affairs, and Hawai’i’s East-West Center. His extensive background in international research and teaching garnered five prestigious Fulbright Awards. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at two African universities – the University of Zimbabwe (1984)
and the National University of Lesotho (1988). During 2000 he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the National Library of New Zealand, where he conducted research for a comparative study of Maori and American Indian sovereignty issues. In 2002 and 2005, he returned to New Zealand as a Fulbright Senior Specialist examining the impact of Maori issues in New Zealand politics.

In the classroom, Dr. Kersey was a highly effective and respected teacher, and a valued mentor to students. He was a member of several MA thesis and PhD dissertation committees. At FAU, he taught U.S. history surveys as well as specialized
undergraduate courses, such as American Indian History, History of Southeastern Indians, History of Immigration and Ethnicity, and graduate courses, like his seminar on American Indian Leadership. In addition, he held guest lectureships at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and the Linguistic University of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia.

After Dr. Kersey retired in 2003, FAU’s History Department hired Dr. Andrew Frank, who worked in a similar field. Currently the Allen Morris Professor of History at Florida State University, and one of the nation’s leading historians of
Native American history, Dr. Frank had this to say about his “role model”: “You cannot overstate the importance Harry had on the writing of Seminole and Miccosukee history. His publications on their twentieth-century history set the baseline for all historians.
Harry wasn’t simply the first to take their histories seriously. Throughout his career, he practiced ‘community engaged scholarship,’ allowing his Indigenous subjects to serve as co-authors and to be recognized as experts unto themselves. He was a tremendous scholar and role model, but I will miss his generosity and smile even more.”

Dr. Kersey is survived by his wife of 62 years, Ruth Dyer Kersey, daughters Karen Kersey Wynne and Laura Lynn Kersey, sons-in-law Michael Wynne and Joseph Mir, and granddaughter Shaina Nicole Kersey Wynne.

Image(L/R): Dr. Harry Kersey and Ruth Kersey