Jim Sumner specializes in southern sports. He is a columnist for Go Duke: The Magazine, Inside Carolina magazine, Duke Basketball Report and College Chalktalk.com. Sumner is a regular contributor to The Associated Press, the Durham Herald-Sun, the Wolfpacker, Basketball Times, ACC Sports Journal, ACCSports.com, GoDuke.com, Tar Heel Tipoff and Blue Devil Tipoff. He has written for The ACC Handbook, Baseball America, Duke Magazine, Basketball America, Our State, Metro Magazine, and numerous other magazines, journals, and websites.

Sumner grew up in Robeson County, North Carolina. He graduated from Duke University in 1972 with a B.A. in American History and received an M.A. in American History from North Carolina State University in 1976.

Sumner was a public historian for the North Carolina Division of Archives and History from 1976 until his retirement in 2006, including a 14-year stint at the North Carolina Museum of History, where he helped establish and curate the permanent North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame exhibit. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of Sport History, the North Carolina Historical Review, the Maryland Historical Magazine and Nine: A Journal of Baseball History, among others.

His books include “A History of Sports in North Carolina,” “Separating the Men From the Boys: The First Half Century of the Carolina League” and “Tales From the Duke Blue Devils Hardwood.”

Sumner was named a member of the Order of the Long-Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor available to citizens of North Carolina, and was named Tar Heel of the Week by the Raleigh News and Observer in 2007.

Sumner is on the board of directors of the Raleigh Hot Stove League and has provided expert commentary to HBO’s Battle for Tobacco Road and ESPN’s Between the Lines. He is a member of the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association, the United States Basketball Writers Association, the Football Writers of America and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and is a voter for the Wooden Awards and a media voter the Lowe’s Senior Class Awards.