How COVID-19 Exposed the Deep Divide Between White Rural Georgia and Atlanta

In Defying the CDC’s Expert Advice, Governor Kemp Is Employing a Political Strategy More Than 150 Years Old

The number of Georgia’s confirmed coronavirus cases jumped by 30 percent in the seven days before Governor Brian Kemp appeared at the state capitol in Atlanta on April 20. There and then, he announced that he was relaxing his previous shelter-in-place order and allowing gyms, barbershops, tattoo parlors, and ultimately, restaurants as well, to reopen.

This was hardly welcome news a scant five miles to the northeast, where experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were warning that such a move would be extremely risky until “the …

Historian William Sturkey Wins the 10th Annual Zócalo Book Prize  | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Historian William Sturkey Wins the 10th Annual Zócalo Book Prize 

Hattiesburg, an Intimate Look at a Segregated Southern City, Delivers a ‘Finely Woven Microcosm of American Society’

Since 2011, the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize has honored the author of the U.S. nonfiction book published in the previous year that best enhances our understanding of community and …

How the U.S. Military Brought Soul Food to the World

After Serving Overseas, Black Servicemen Opened Joints That Dished up Chitlins, Cornbread, and Fried Chicken

Soul food ambassadors: probably not who comes to mind when you think of the African Americans who have served overseas in the U.S. armed forces. Yet no other group of …

How Nashville ‘Killed’ Traditional Country Music—and Then Reinvented It

The Genre Created by 'Hillbillies' and Folkies Now Speaks to Pickup-Driving Suburbanites

25 years ago, American Heritage writer Tony Scherman declared traditional country music dead and done with, asking, “How far from its social origins can an art form grow before it …