A native of Opelousas, Louisiana, Dr. Merline Pitre is a professor of History and former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University. Dr. Pitre began her career in the 1960s as a French professor at St. Augustine College in Raleigh, North Carolina. After several years teaching foreign language, she enrolled at Temple University to pursue a degree in History. She completed her PhD in 1976 and then took a job at Texas Southern University in Houston.

Dr. Pitre has written several important works during her career. Her first monograph, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868 to 1898 (1985) has shaped the study of Reconstruction in Texas for an entire generation of scholars. Pitre’s other major work, In Struggle against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900-1957, appeared in 1999, and resulted in Lula White’s addition to the state-wide social studies curriculum in Texas public schools.

Pitre has received numerous awards for her contributions to historical study. She was named Scholar of the Year at Texas Southern University in 1987. The following year, she received the Outstanding Black Texan Award from the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. In more recent years, she served as the first African American president of the Texas State Historical Association in 2011 and received the Lorraine Williams Leadership Award from the Association of Black Women Historians in 2014.