Mark T. Carleton

Mark Thomas Carleton (February 7, 1935–October 2, 1995), was an historian who specialized in political studies of his native Louisiana. From 1964 until his death at the age of sixty, he was a professor at Louisiana State University in his native Baton Rouge.

Carleton received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957 from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He served thereafter in the United States Marine Corps from 1957-1960. He earned a Master of Arts in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1970, both from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Carleton served from 1973-1978 on the "good government" group, the Public Affairs Research Council. He left LSU in the 1976-1977 academic year to be the PAR director but returned to the history department in 1978.

In 1971, Carleton published his Politics and Punishment: The History of the Louisiana State Penal System (1971), with emphasis on the large prison farm at Angola, bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River. Carleton reports that nearly "overnight" in Louisiana and several other southern prisons, the inmate population became predominantly African American. The prison was populated at first mostly by young men from farming backgrounds. Carleton claims that agriculture became key to southern prisons in the era after the American Civil War. Convict labor and farm work became "synonymous terms in the public and political mind."

In 1975, Carleton co-edited with sociologist Perry H. Howard and Joseph B. Parker the anthology Readings in Louisiana Politics. His contribution includes a study of the three failed gubernatorial campaigns in 1956, 1960, and 1964 of the late New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison.

Carleton's other publications include:

• River Capital: An Illustrated History of Baton Rouge (1981)

• Louisiana Politics: Festival in a Labyrinth (1982)

• Louisiana: A History (co-author, 1984)

He was active in the establishment at LSU of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, named for T. Harry Williams, the Midwestern-born historian known particularly for his studies of the American Civil War and Huey Pierce Long, Jr. In 1992, he was elected president of the Louisiana Historical Association.

In 1963, Carleton married the former Maureen O'Hearn, and they had three sons: Roderick Lewis, who had a son, Raphael; Michael Owen, who had a son and three daughters, Madison, Megan, Marielle, and Mathew; and Mark Albert, who had a son and daughter, Camille and Richard. The Carletons divorced in 1982.

Carleton's papers, consisting mainly of printed material, typescripts, and correspondence, were deposited with LSU. The materials include his career as a professor as well as his association with PAR.