America's Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy

(Hardback)

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The remarkable story of how African Americans transformed Atlanta, the former heart of the Confederacy, into today's Black mecca

Atlanta is home to some of America's most prominent Black politicians, artists, businesses, and HBCUs. Yet, in 1861, Atlanta was a final contender to be the capital of the Confederacy. Sixty years later, long after the Civil War, it was the Ku Klux Klan's sacred "Imperial City."

America's Black Capital chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism, as African Americans pushed back against Confederate ideology to create an extraordinary locus of achievement. What drove them, historian Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar shows, was the belief that Black uplift would be best advanced by forging Black institutions. America's Black Capital is an inspiring story of Black achievement against all odds, with effects that reached far beyond Georgia, shaping the nation's popular culture, public policy, and politics.

Reviews

"Spectacular! America's Black Capital is a landmark in Black history. Jeffrey Ogbar provides an expert excavation of how Atlanta came to be seen as the 'Black Mecca, ' including a deftly drawn origin story for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A dazzling book."
--Gerald Horne, author of The Counter-Revolution of 1776
"Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar's America's Black Capital is a towering achievement. It powerfully captures the dynamism of Black politics in Atlanta--in great depth and sheer brilliance. This remarkable book is an inspiring work of history in which Black people take center stage as the key architects of their own destiny."
--Keisha N. Blain, coeditor of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Four Hundred Souls and award-winning author of Until I Am Free

Author Bio

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar is professor of history and founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music at the University of Connecticut. He earned his PhD in US history from Indiana University Bloomington and his BA in history from Morehouse College in Atlanta. He lives in Hartford, Connecticut.