Professor Emeritus John Lamont Peterson, Ph.D., died unexpectedly of natural causes May 23 in Atlanta. He was 72. Mr. Peterson, a gay man, had served on the faculty of Georgia State University's Department of Psychology until his retirement in 2015.
According to an obituary prepared by Roger Bakeman for GSU, Mr. Peterson graduated with honors from Jones High School in Orlando and attended summer studies at Harvard University.
He graduated from Florida A&M University in 1970 and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1974.
His mentor was James Jackson, one of the most eminent African American psychologists of the last half-century, known for his studies on the impact of racial disparities on minority health and for