He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Political Science and history from North Carolina Central University and his Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University. His research focuses on mapping African-American, Native-American, and Early American history. It also examines the creolization, or merging, of the three cultures during the colonial period particularly in eastern North Carolina. He primarily writes about the lives of the inhabitants of Indian Woods, North Carolina in Bertie County over its 400 years of recorded history, and how their lives shaped and were shaped by their surrounding landscape. His work documents the long history of the region and explains the intertwined histories of the groups he studies through maps he designs and illustrations and photos he mines from archives, special collections, and private collections.