Steve Estes

Office

Advising Area

• General

Biography

Professor Steve Estes was born in North Carolina, and he grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. He received a B.A. in history and economics from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1994. After spending a short while working in San Francisco, he went to the University of Georgia for an M.A. in history and then to the University of North Carolina for a Ph.D. in history. Along the way, he worked as an interviewer for the Southern Oral History Program in North Carolina, a counselor at the Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, a teacher in the Sunflower County Freedom Project in Mississippi, a researcher at the American Youth Policy Forum in Washington, DC, and a guest curator at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. Dr. Estes lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter. In his free time, he likes to play music and surf.

Education

Ph.D., University of North Carolina

Academic Interests

The American South, California, Civil Rights, Labor, Sports, Gender, and Sexuality

Concentrations

Modern U.S. History

Selected Publications & Presentations

“Surfing the South: The Search for Waves and the People Who Ride Them” (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).

Charleston in Black and White: 
 Race and Power in the South after the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Ask & Tell: Gay & Lesbian Veterans Speak Out (University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). Winner of the Norris & Carol Hundley Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association