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Raymond A. Mohl is Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he served as department chair from 1996 to 2002. He is a native of Tarrytown, New York and a graduate of Hamilton College. He earned a masters degree from Yale University, spent two years as a high school history teacher in New York State, and then returned to graduate work at New York University, where he completed a second M.A. and the Ph.D. in history. Before arriving at UAB, he taught at Indiana University Northwest in Gary and at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he also served as department chair, and where, in 1992, he was selected as the university’s Distinguished Teacher of the Year. A specialist in modern U.S. urban, ethnic, and social history, Professor Mohl is the author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, including Poverty in New York, 1783-1825 (1971); The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age (1985); Steel City: Urban and Ethnic Patterns in Gary, Indiana (1986); Searching for the Sunbelt (1990); Urban Policy in Twentieth-Century America (1993); and The New African American Urban History (1996). His most recent book is South of the South: Jewish Activists and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960 (University Press of Florida, 2004). He has published over 130 research articles, which have appeared as book chapters and in such publications as the Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, Social Science Quarterly, Labor History, International Migration Review, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Policy History, and many other journals. His articles have won several writing prizes, including the A. Philip Randolph-Messenger Prize in 1991 for outstanding writing on civil rights, the Catherine Bauer Wurster Prize from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History in 1995, and the Frederick W. Connor Prize in the History of Ideas at UAB in 2001.

Professor Mohl was the founding editor of the Journal of Urban History in 1973, and continues to serve on the editorial board of that journal. In 1997-1998 he served as President of the Urban History Association, an international organization of over 1,000 scholars interested in the history of cities and urbanization. Dr. Mohl has held Fulbright Professorships at Tel Aviv University, the University of Western Australia, and the University of Gottingen, as well as major research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Dr. Mohl’s research on the history of race relations in Miami led to service as an expert witness in important housing and election litigation in Dade County, Florida. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sought his testimony on the state of race relations in Miami when it held hearings in the city in 1995. Since moving to Birmingham, Professor Mohl has expanded his research interests to include the recent migration of Mexicans and other Latinos to Alabama and to the South generally. Dr. Mohl is currently completing two new books: a study of the impact of interstate highways on American cities; and a history of race and ethnic relations in Miami, Florida, to be published by the University Press of Florida.

Education:
B.A., Hamilton College, 1961 M.A.T., Yale University, 1962
M.A., New York University, 1965
Ph.D., New York University, 1967