Professor of History
Keller Family Endowed Professor

Department Chair, African American and Diaspora Studies

• Ph.D., in American History with concentrations in African American and Latin American History, Louisiana State University, 2009
• M.A., in American History, Louisiana State University, 2001
• B.A., History, Xavier University of Louisiana, 1999

Specialties: U.S., New South, Civil Rights, African American Activism

Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir teaches courses in African American History, including Slavery and Servitude, U. S. Civil Rights Movement, and Hip Hop and Social Justice. She has worked in the field of public history and been featured on MSNBC, History News Network, has been quoted in the New York Times and published a New York Times Op-Ed article, as well as interviews by local news and radio media. She has written several articles, one of her most noted ones being published in The Journal of African-American History titled, “Nothing Is To Be Feared”: Norman C. Francis, Civil Rights Activism, And The Black Catholic Movement.  Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir has severed as member of the New Orleans Tricentennial Symposium Committee, the New Orleans Public School Board Renaming Committee, the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail Site Review Committee, chair of the American Historical Association, Nominations Committee and served on the Committee on Minority Historians. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir currently servs as a board member for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Louisiana Supreme Court Historic Society and chairs the Helis Foundation John Scott Center. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir was awarded a $500,000 Andrew W. Mellon Grant to create the African American and African Diasporic Cultural Studies Major at Xavier University of Louisiana. In addition, she is the former chair of the History Department and current chair of the African American and Diaspora Studies Department, former President of Faculty Association and is the 2021 recipient of the Xavier University of Louisiana Norman C. Francis Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching as well as an inaugural recipient of Xavier University’s under Young Alumni Award in 2014.