Join the University of Georgia Press in partnership with the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries and the University of Georgia Department of History for a book discussion with chief executive officer of DeKalb County Michael L. Thurmond. Thurmond will discuss his book James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia: A Founder’s Journey from Slave Trader to Abolitionist. James Brooks, the Carl and Sally Gable Distinguished Professor of History, will provide an introduction. A light reception will follow the discussion.
James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia uncovers how Oglethorpe's philosophical and moral evolution from slave trader to abolitionist was propelled by his intellectual relationships with two formerly enslaved Black men. Oglethorpe's unique “friendships" with Ayuba Suleiman Diallo and Olaudah Equiano, two of eighteenth-century England's most influential Black men, are little-known examples of interracial antislavery activism that breathed life into the formal abolitionist movement.
Thurmond is the chief executive officer of DeKalb County, Georgia. He is the author of Freedom: Georgia’s Antislavery Heritage, 1733–1865 and A Story Untold: Black Men and Women in Athens History. Thurmond has previously served in the Georgia legislature, as director of Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services, as Georgia labor commissioner and as superintendent of DeKalb schools. In 1997 Thurmond became a distinguished lecturer at the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
This event is co-sponsored by the University of Georgia Press, the UGA Special Collections Libraries, and the University of Georgia's History Department.