The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But does the nation begin in 1776, or do we trace its origins to some point earlier—for example, the arrival of the first enslaved people in 1619 or the initial settlement of Indigenous people? What’s at stake with establishing a date that marks the nation’s origins? Where does the history of the nation begin? In colonial New England, the Chesapeake, or in the Southwest?In this unprecedented volume, leadi...

The dramatic life of Vietnam War hero Roy Benavidez, revealing how Hispanic Americans have long shaped US history, from "a major new voice [with] lyrical powers as a biographer” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass)In May 1968, while serving in Vietnam, Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez led the rescue of a reconnaissance team surrounded by hundreds of enemy soldiers. He saved the lives of at least eight of his comrades that day...

On January 6, 2021, more than two thousand rioters stormed the doors of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., hoping to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from former president Donald Trump to his successor, Joseph Biden. The deaths, property damage, and vicious rampage that ensued were witnessed on live television as an unprecedented attack on the democratic process and those who strive to protect it.As an installment of UGA Press’s History in the Headlines series, ...

Winner of the Zócalo Public Square Book PrizeBenjamin L. Hooks Award Finalist“An insightful, powerful, and moving book.”—Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice“Sturkey’s clear-eyed and meticulous book pulls off a delicate balancing act. While depicting the terrors of Jim Crow, he also shows how Hattiesburg’s black residents, forced to forge their own communal institutions, laid the organizational groundwork for the civil right...

Fifty years after Freedom Summer, To Write in the Light of Freedom offers a glimpse into the hearts of the African American youths who attended the Mississippi Freedom Schools in 1964. One of the most successful initiatives of Freedom Summer, more than forty Freedom Schools opened doors to thousands of young African American students. Here they learned civics, politics, and history, curriculum that helped them instead of the degrading lessons supporting segregation and Jim Crow an...

If you really want to understand Jim Crow—what it was and how African Americans rose up to defeat it—you should start by visiting Mobile Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the heart of the historic black downtown. William Sturkey introduces us to both old-timers and newcomers who arrived in search of economic opportunities promised by the railroads, sawmills, and factories of the New South. He also takes us across town and inside the homes of white Hattiesburgers to show how their lives w...

* Illustrated* Author Biography* Interactive Table of ContentsThe Negro ProblemHere are six historic essays on the state of race relations during the Reconstruction and early twentieth century, written from the African American point of view. These essays show us how far race relations have progressed, and sadly how far we have yet to go. Included are "Industrial Education for the Negro" by Booker T. Washington, "The Talente...

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain’s largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica’s vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.Thistlewood’s diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slav...

This “viscerally powerful . . . compilation of firsthand accounts of the Jim Crow era” won the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Carey McWilliams Award (Publisher’s Weekly, starred review).Based on interviews collected by the Behind the Veil Oral History Project at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, this remarkable book presents for the first time the most extensive oral history ever compiled of African American life under segregation.

Black and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public schools, and their typically poor performance is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in America today—thus, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the racial gap in school achievement is the nation's most critical civil rights issue and an educational crisis; it's no wonder that "No Child Left Behind," the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, made closing the racial gap in educ...

The untold story of the night a divide nation turned to James Brown—and he delivered hope and calm in the form of an immortal concertSince James Brown's death in December 2006, the Godfather of Soul has received many stirring tributes. Yet few have addressed his contribution in the darkest hour of the Civil Rights movement. Telling for the first time the story of his historic Boston Garden concert the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, The Harde...

A little story about one girl’s attempt to claim her heritage, and the maneuvering by the Canadian government to discredit that heritage. This book contains a “gift of words” for Toronto, with views on substance abuse presented in the spirit of a fever dream. Feisty. Irreverent. Silly. Political. Experiential.