Jerry Urso is a public historian, writer, and archival researcher whose work focuses on Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era, with particular emphasis on Florida and the First Coast. His research is grounded in primary-source documentation, including newspapers, census records, court filings, fraternal proceedings, church archives, institutional records, and contemporaneous accounts.

Urso has served as Grand Historian of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida, where he is responsible for preserving, interpreting, and verifying institutional records spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has also served as Historian of the James Weldon Johnson Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and is an FPS-Life member of the organization, aligning his work with ASALH’s founding emphasis on disciplined, source-based history.

He has served as editor of Phylaxis magazine and as a Fellow of the Phylaxis Society, a scholarly body dedicated to the study and preservation of Prince Hall Masonic history and thought. He has served as a member of Chi Rho Fraternity (Prince Hall Affiliated).

Within ASALH, Urso has previously served as President of the Alexander Darnes Research Chapter, where he led public programming, research initiatives, and community-based historical education.

He has served as a panelist and research contributor for multiple documentary and public history projects, including work related to LaVilla history, the BBC Finding Your Roots project, Rosewood research for the University of Florida, and research on Josiah T. Walls for Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU).

His research has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine and has been published in several newspapers and magazines, where his work is cited for its reliance on original documentation and corrective analysis.

Urso has served as a research assistant to noted scholars including Dr. Canter Brown Jr. (FAMU and Fort Valley State University) and Dr. Alonzo Tehuti Evans of Howard University, contributing archival research and source verification to academic and public-history projects.

He has contributed research and historical support to cultural institutions including the Clara White Mission Museum and the Ritz Theatre and Museum.

Urso has served as founder and curator of the Sollie Mitchell Civil Rights Museum, overseeing historical interpretation, collections development, and public education focused on local civil rights history and community memory.

He has also served as historian for the Real Rosewood Foundation and the July Perry Foundation, supporting efforts to preserve difficult histories through documented, evidence-based scholarship.

Across all of his work—whether institutional history, museum curation, documentary research, or descendant-focused inquiry—Urso maintains a consistent methodological standard: claims must be documented, sources must be verifiable, and the historical record must be corrected when the evidence requires it.