H.D. Kirkpatrick, Ph. D.
H. D. (“DE”) KIRKPATRICK was born and raised in North Carolina. He earned his B.A. cum laude in Fine Arts from Harvard (1970), his M. Ed. in Guidance and Counseling from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (1973), and his Ph. D. in psychology from the Saybrook University in San Francisco (1978). He completed a post-doctoral certification in forensic psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley, CA. He is board certified in forensic psychology by the American Board of Forensic Psychology (retired). He practiced clinical and forensic psychology for thirty-seven years. In 2014, he learned, from a former high school classmate, Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, that Jimmie’s ancestors had been enslaved by De’s ancestors. The shocking news that his paternal ancestors were slaveholders changed De’s life. Since then, these two men have developed a deep friendship. They present their shared history to various audiences and are the primary subjects of a now-completed feature documentary—” A Binding Truth”—centered on racial reconciliation. De lives with his wife, Katie Holliday, in North Carolina, where he pursues writing, research, public speaking engagements, and exploring public history. He and Jimmie Lee have founded Stirring the Ashes, LLC as a platform to advance the sharing of their story.
De has focused on writing books for the last 12 years. His first two published works were fictional psychological thrillers, entitled Alienation of Affection (2010) and Trafficking Death (2013).
In 2014 De received a phone call that would change his life, both as an author and as a human being. That call was from Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, a former high school classmate, who informed De that his great-great grandfather , Hugh Kirkpatrick, was a slaveholder, and that he in fact had enslaved Jimmie Lee’s great-great-great grandfather, Sam Kirkpatrick. This call, and the relationship that followed, led De on a journey into his own family history, and into the psychology of racist enslavement. The result of this process is De’s latest book, Marse: A Psychological Portrait of the Southern Slave Master and His Legacy of White Supremacy, which draws on his training as a forensic psychologist and public historian to dive deeply into the mindset of the Southern slaveholder and the roots of white supremacy.
To learn more about the book, or to learn more about De and Jimmie Lee’s relationship and the documentary film chronicling their journey, please use the links below.