A native of Little Rock, Elizabeth Jacoway received her Ph.D. in American History at the University of North Carolina in 1974, working under George B. Tindall, Joel Williamson, and Donald Matthews.   She is an internationally known scholar of southern history and race relations, the author or editor of six books and 17 articles.   She has published with Louisiana State University Press, the University of Arkansas Press, the University of Florida Press, the University Press of Mississippi, The Journal of Southern History , The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, The Alabama Review , Reviews in American History, Notable American Women , The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture , The Encyclopedia of South Carolina , and South Atlantic Urban Studies .    She recently participated as an invited contributor in a Journal of Southern History forum discussing the merits and impact of the Brown decision.

Dr. Jacoway taught history at the college level for eight years.   She is a frequent speaker, both at professional conferences and at community events such as the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce's Leadership class, at which she has presented a popular overview of the Little Rock crisis for the last ten years.   She has organized and taught writing workshops to high school students.   She organized and spoke at a national conference on the Little Rock Crisis in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary.  

Jacoway has served several times as a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she has reviewed manuscripts for many academic presses and scholarly journals.   She has served on the Executive Council of the Southern Historical Association, the Board of Editors of the Journal of Southern History , and the Boards of Directors of the Arkansas Historical Association, the Southern Association for Women Historians and the Arkansas Women's History Institute.   She has served on planning committees for the Little Rock Central High School Museum Visitor's Center and the Penn School Museum.   She is a founder and past president of the Arkansas Women's History Institute and a past president of the Southern Association for Women Historians.   She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.   She has also been active in the life of the small Arkansas community where she resides with her family.