Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar

Professor

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Ph.D., Indiana

Director, Center for the Study of Popular Music

Areas of Specialty

Twentieth-Century United States, Social History, African-American

Current Research Interests

Black Nationalism, U. S. Popular Culture

Biography

Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar was born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received his BA in History from Morehouse College in Atlanta. He earned his MA and Ph.D. in U.S. History with a minor in African studies from Indiana University in Bloomington. Since 1997 he has taught at the University of Connecticut’s Department of History. From 2003-2009 he served as the Director of the Africana Studies Institute. He served as Associate Dean for the Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2009-2012. In June 2012 he was named the University’s Vice Provost for Diversity. In 2014 he became founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music.

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar’s research interests include the 20th century United States with a focus in African American history. More specifically, Dr. Ogbar studies black nationalism and social justice movements. He has developed courses, lectured and published articles on subjects as varied as the New Negro Renaissance, mass incarceration, social movements, hip-hop, and urban history. Dr. Ogbar has held fellowships at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, where he completed work on his book, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. He also held fellowships at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and the Africana studies program at the University of Miami where he conducted research for his book Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. He won a UConn Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship to continue researching and writing his latest book, America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy.

Along with research and teaching, Dr. Ogbar has enjoyed his role as the advisor to numerous student organizations, as well as working in various community service projects.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy, New York: Basic Books, 2023.

Keywords in African American Studies, co-editor with Erica R. Edwards and Roderick A. Ferguson, New York University Press, 2018.

Harlem Renaissance: Politics, Arts, Letters, editor. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Winner of the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize, North East Black Studies Alliance (2008)

Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Winner of an “Outstanding Academic Title,” Choice Magazine, (2005) Updated with a new Preface (2019).

The Civil Rights Movement: Problems in American Civilization, editor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

Articles and Book Chapters (Selected)

“Revolutionary Alliances: Black Power, Brown Power, and Radical Ethnic Nationalism, 1966-1973,” in Black Power in Hemispheric Perspective: Movements and Cultures of Resistance in the Black Americas, edited by Wilfried Raussert and Matti Steinitz, New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2022.

“Criminal Minded: The War on Drugs, Social Justice, Policing, and Hip-Hop,” in For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice, edited by Lakeyta Monique Bonnette and Adolphus Belk, University of Michigan Press, 2022.

“Black Nationalism,” in The Routledge Handbook on Pan-Africanism, edited by Reiland Rabaka, New York: Routledge, 2020.

Introduction to St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture, Chair, Advisory Board, Boston: Cengage Press, 2018.

“A Short Political History of Rap Culture in the U.S./ Rapkulture und Politik Eine US-Amerikanischie Geschichte” in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ, “On Politics and Contemporary History”) which is published as a supplement of the weekly newspaper of the German Parliament (“Das Parlament”). February 2018, 12-20.

“Black Power: The Looks,” in Black Power 50, edited by Sylviane Anna Diouf, and Komozi Woodard. New York: The New Press, 2016.

“The Black Panther Party and the Rise of Radical Ethnic Nationalism,” in The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution, edited by Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams, New York: Nation Books, 2016.

“Message from the Grassroots: Hip-Hop Activism, Millennials, and the Race for the White House,” in The Hip Hop & Obama Reader, edited by Travis Lars Gosa and Erik Nielson, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

“The Formation of Asian American Nationalism in the Age of Black Power, 1966-1975,” The New Black History: Revisiting the Second Reconstruction, edited by Manning Marable and Elizabeth Kai Hinton, New York: Palgrave MacMillian. (Reprint of an article from Souls.) 2011.

“Introduction: History, Mission, and Methodology of Africana Studies,” International Journal of Africana Studies, (special issue), Vol. 14, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2008, 325-329. Guest Co-Editor with Dorothy Tsruta.

“Holla Black: The Bush Administration and the Return of Political Hip-Hop,” Radical Society Review of Culture and Politics, Volume 32, No. 3, Winter 2006, 67-74.

“Puerto Rico en mi Corazón: The Young Lords, Black Power and Puerto Rican Nationalism in the U.S., 1966-1972,” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Spring 2006.

“Brown Power to Brown People: The Black Panther Party and Latino Radicalism, 1967-1973,” in Between Culture and Politics: Toward a New History of the Black Panther Party, eds. Jama Lazarow and Yoruhu Williams, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

“Rainbow Radicalism: The Rise of Radical Ethnic Nationalism,” in The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, edited by Peniel E. Joseph, New York: Routledge Press, 2006.

“Yellow Power: The Formation of Asian American Nationalism in the Age of Black Power, 1966-1975,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 3. No. 3. Summer 2001.