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

Historian Ogbar (Hip Hop Revolution) presents an illuminating and thought-provoking history of Atlanta from the 19th century to the present. Focusing on how, in spite of suppression by Georgia’s white nationalists and neo-Confederates, the city became a mecca for African Americans, Ogbar contends that this result was achieved through a commitment to “Afro-self-determinism” (“the belief that black people would be best served by creating institutions for, by, and in the best interests of black people”) and a rejection of desegregation, integration, and interracial cooperation as goals. Ogbar leads the reader through several eras, including the end of slavery, post-Reconstruction, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century, and provides a harrowing description of the 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre. Throughout, he traces the efforts, initially on the outskirts of the city, of Black residents to build Black institutions. By the 1970s, Atlanta was home to Black universities and schools, Black businesses, Black suburbs, and Black political strength (in 1973, the city was the first in the South to elect a Black mayor). By the 21st century, Atlanta flourished as a center of Black life. Ogbar’s meticulous account is both an eye-opening reassessment of the origins of African American political power and a significant contribution to American history. (Nov.)