Dr. Light Townsend Cummins, Ph.D (b. 1946) is an educator and historian who grew up in San Antonio, Texas, graduating from the San Antonio Academy and Alamo Heights High School. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Tulane University. He is the Bryan Professor of History at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He has written or edited seven books and numerous articles on the history of Texas, Louisiana, and the Southwestern United States. As an historian of the Spanish Borderlands, his research interests deal with the advance of the Anglo-American frontier into the Mississippi River valley, Spanish Louisiana and Spanish colonial Texas during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, an Associate of the Danforth Foundation, and a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor. In 1994, he was awarded the Premio de España y America by King Juan Carlos I of Spain for his scholarly research dealing with the history of Spain and the United States. Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. of Kentucky made Cummins a Kentucky Colonel in honor of his publications dealing with the history of the Mississippi valley. In 2003, Cummins served as historical consultant and on-camera commentator for "Louisiana: A History," a six episode television series celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, a series produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting and aired nationally by PBS. Cummins was awarded the Francisco Bouligny Prize for his publications dealing with Spanish colonial Louisiana and is a lifetime fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. Texas Governor Ann Richards appointed Cummins to serve on the Stephen F. Austin Bicentennial Commission. He has also been a member of the Board of Directors of Humanities Texas, the state based-arm of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Historical Association, and the Texas State Historical Association. He is a former President of the Southwestern Historical Association of the Southwest Social Science Association. Cummins spent his childhood living at a home located on Newberry Terrace in Terrell Hills, a house that later belonged to the Geppert family and in which another notable San Antonian, the musician Christopher Cross, also grew up a decade later. That home has since been demolished.
Books
- A Guide to the History of Louisiana (1982)
- A Guide to the History of Texas (1988)
- Texas: A Political History (1990)
- Spanish Observers and the American Revolution (1992)
- Louisiana: A History 4th Edition (2001)
- Austin College: A Sesquicentennial History (1999)
- United States History to 1877 (2006)
