[4] His older sister Monica Forret is also an academic, working as a professor of Business Administration and Managerial Studies at St. Ambrose University.
[6] He spent two years at James Madison before joining the department of history at Lamar University as assistant professor in 2005.
[7] Following his first year at Lamar, Forret published his first book Race Relations at the Margins: Slaves and Poor Whites in the Antebellum Southern Countryside with Louisiana State University Press.
[6] During this time, he published his second book Slavery in the United States as part of the "Issues and Controversies in American History" series.
[15] Forret was named University Scholar Award winner for 2016,[16] and Distinguished Faculty Research Fellow from 2016 to 2019 and again from 2019 until 2021.