Dr. David Ponton III is a historian of Afro-America and the twentieth century United States. Ponton is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Houston and the Permanence of Segregation: An Afropessimist Account of History (University of Texas Press, 2024).  He serves as the Undergraduate Director for the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies and is affiliate faculty with the Institute for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Ponton also serves as the Director of the Institute on Black Life and the Chair of the Racial Justice Initiative at USF. He received his A.B. degree from Princeton University with a religious studies concentration and certificates in African American Studies and 6-12 social studies education. After teaching high school history for three years, Ponton earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in History at Rice University with a graduate certificate in the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.