Danielle Wiggins, "Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
From New Books in the American South by New Books Network
March 8, 2026 · 1h 3m
About this episode
Danielle Wiggins discusses her book on the history of modern black liberalism in Atlanta.
A provocative new history of modern black liberalism Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) offers a provocative new history of modern black liberalism by situating the seemingly conservative tendencies of black elected officials in the post–civil rights era within neoliberal American politics and an enduring black liberal tradition. In the 1970s and ’80s, cities across the country elected black mayors for the first time. Just as these officials gained political power, however, their cities felt the full brunt of white flight and deindustrialization. Tasked with governing cities in crisis, black political leaders responded in seemingly conservative ways to the social problems that austerity worsened. Nowhere was this response more evident than in Atlanta. In the nation’s preeminent black urban regime, black leaders such as mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young employed the power of policing and the private sector to discipline black Atlantans, hoping they would equip vulnerable communities with the tools to manage the volatility of the era. Danielle Wiggins shows that these punitive responses to the problems of crime…
People in this episode
Guest: Danielle Wiggins
Topics covered
- black liberalism
- Atlanta
- history
- politics
Keywords
- black excellence
- neoliberal politics
- Maynard Jackson
- Andrew Young
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism
Books & works: Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism
Places: Atlanta, U.S.
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