Dr. Glenn T. Eskew

Named in 2021 a Distinguished University Professor, Dr. Glenn T. Eskew (BA Auburn University, PhD University of Georgia) joined the faculty at Georgia State University in 1993.  His 2013 biography Johnny Mercer:  Southern Songwriter for the World received the Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society while his 1997 But For Birmingham:  The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle won the Francis Butler Simkins Prize of the Southern Historical Association.  His essay, “The Case of Bishop Lucius Henry Holsey,” appeared in the November 1992 Journal of Southern History.  He has published a variety of essays on the civil rights movement and memorialization in a number of edited works.  Eskew received the Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities in 2006 and the Hugh McCall Award of the Georgia Association of Historians in 2015.  He has served as lead scholar on 17 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Workshops for Schoolteachers.  He holds leadership positions in the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association.  Presently Eskew directs the GSU World Heritage Initiative that has raised $1.77 million dollars to develop a Serial Nomination of U. S. Civil Rights Movement Sites to propose for inscription on the World Heritage List.