[1] For three years, Pitre was a teacher at St. Augustine College in Raleigh, North Carolina.
She conducted research at the Library of Congress, National Archives, and the Frederick Douglass Memorial Home.
[4] In 1981, she was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, which awarded a stipend for independent research.
[6] In 1983, Pitre became the associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University, a position she held until 1985.
[8] In 2007 and 2012, she received the Liz Carpenter Best Book on the History of Women Award from the Texas State Historical Association for her books Black Women in Texas History (with Bruce Glasrud) and Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement (with Bruce Glasrud), respectively.