Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar

Online ticket sales close at 5pm EST on the day of the event. Tickets will be available at the door prior to the event start time.

Atlanta History Center is thrilled to welcome historian Jeffrey Ogbar for a fascinating discussion of Atlanta’s influential Black history. This event will focus on the pivotal period that set Atlanta up to become the heartbeat of the Civil Rights Movement: post-Reconstruction until the 1940s. 

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. 

 Language provided by publisher.

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.