Pulitzer Prize Winner DeBerry to Give Armstrong-Branch Lecture March 10

Wed, 02/18/2026 - 01:35pm | By: David Tisdale

Jarvis DeBerry, a member of the New Orleans Times-Picayune Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team that covered Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the city and the Gulf Coast, will be the guest speaker for The University of Southern Mississippi’s 2026 Armstrong-Branch Distinguished Lecture. This free event is set for Tuesday, March 10, at 6:30 p.m. in the Joe Paul Theater at the Thad Cochran Center on the Southern Miss Hattiesburg campus.

The Armstrong-Branch Distinguished Lecture Series was established in 1993 in honor of Gwendolyn Armstrong-Chamberlain and Raylawni Adams Branch, who integrated the university as its first African American students in 1965.

A Holly Springs, Miss. native, DeBerry was with The Times-Picayune from 1997 to 2019, first as a reporter and later as an editorial writer and columnist for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. In 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2019, DeBerry was awarded first prize for column writing in the annual contest sponsored by the Louisiana/Mississippi Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

In 2016 and 2019, DeBerry received the National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence Award in commentary and, also in 2019, earned the New Orleans Press Club’s best column prize. He also worked as a columnist for Cleveland.com and other media outlets before taking on his current role as opinions editor for MS Now.

DeBerry was in the original cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leaders. In collaboration with two members of the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies leadership team, he is working to raise awareness of the prevalence of trauma among New Orleans youth.

A member of the NOMMO Literary Society in New Orleans, DeBerry’s poetry has been published in Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. He is the author of I Feel to Believe: Collected Columns, published by the University of New Orleans Press.

“We’re honored to have such an accomplished writer of Mr. DeBerry’s standing as presenter for the Armstrong-Branch Distinguished Lecture Series,” said Dr. Eddie Holloway, lecture series coordinator. “We’re looking forward to him discussing his observations of the American scene during his decades-long career as a journalist, particularly those of the Gulf South. We welcome everyone to join us for what I’m sure will be a captivating presentation.”

For more information about the Armstrong-Branch Distinguished Lecture Series, contact%20Holloway.