"With precision and economy, literary scholar Briggs delivers a rich African-American history of Nashville, Tenn., to argue that the 'New Negro' appeared before the Great Migration of the interwar period … The book's scholarly structure and language won't prevent lay readers from reaping the rewards of Briggs's elegantly written history of people and events that remain relevant today."
~Publishers Weekly
"The New Negro in the Old South raises powerful questions about the origins of black protest thought and the limitations of the Great Migration narrative."
~The American Historical Review
"Briggs's attention to Nashville's influence on Du Bois and to Griggs's texts is illuminating, and his focus on the protests in the city is important recover work … this is an interesting study, with compelling insights."
~The Journal of American History
“Briggs is a cogent writer and a skilled historian with dexterous talents for stitching together edifying patchworks of historiography and textual analysis, weaving together local evidence and a global argument with rhythmical flair."
~Michael A. Chaney, author of Fugitive Vision: Slave Image and Black Identity in Antebellum Narrative
"Arguing persuasively for Nashville’s impact on the New Negro Movement, Gabriel Briggs challenges the assumptions we hold regarding a watershed moment in 20th century African American literary and cultural history."
~Herman Beavers, University of Pennsylvania
"Briggs’ study of fin-de-siecle New Negroes in the South is a superb interdisciplinary discussion. Extraordinary are his portraits of Du Bois and of Nashville, 'the cauldron of the New Negro sensibility.'".
~Robert B. Stepto, Yale University
"Briggs writes with eloquence and clarity and with lyricism of words that pulls the reader into this nonfiction work with the ease and flow of reading a novel."
~Journal of American Culture
