America's Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy
Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar
Basic Books
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.