Larry Allen McCluney, Jr., is an Instructor of American History at Mississippi Delta Community College and an American Civil War Living Historian since 1995. Based in Greenwood, Mississippi, he is the author of numerous bestselling books which have been the topic of historical debate among students and historians. Additionally, McCluney is currently a member of the nonprofit organization Sons of Confederate Veterans for over 29 years and currently serves as the 76th Past Commander-in-Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He is also a former Chairman of the Combined Boards that oversees Beauvoir, the last home of the only President of the Confederate States of America. Beauvoir, which is in Biloxi, Mississippi, served as a seaside retirement estate of Jefferson Davis and his family.

McCluney received his bachelors’ and masters’ degree in history at Mississippi State University. Previously, he served as a Golden Triangle Civil War Round Table member and has taught in the Mississippi public school system for the past thirty-two years on the secondary education level and over twenty years on the community college level. McCluney’s publications have focused on political, intellectual, and social history of the American Civil War. His bestselling books are The Yazoo Pass Expedition: A Union Thrust into the Delta (Civil War Series) (2017) (ranked bestseller in Military Pictorial History, Reconstruction History of the U.S., and U.S. Civil War Confederate History), On to Vicksburg!: The Mississippi Central Railroad Campaign (2019), and In Defense of General Beauregard (2022).

McCluney has received many awards for historical preservation from the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy as well as numerous other awards as an educator. He was also chosen as the Mississippi’s top American History teacher in 2014 by the Daughters of the American Revolution and was chosen for Who’s Who Among America’s Top Teachers on numerous occasions.