Johns Hopkins historian honored by Southern Historical Association

N.D.B. Connolly, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, has won an award from the Southern Historical Association for his latest book, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida.

Image caption: N.D.B. Connolly

The Southern Historical Association's Bennett H. Wall Award recognizes the best book published in a two-year period that examines southern business or economic history. The prize committee called Connolly's work "a provocative, persuasive study."

Connolly "uses the real estate business of Miami as a lens through which to view the continual repositioning of urban power blocs that segregated and reshaped city neighborhoods from the Progressive Era through the 1970s," the committee wrote. "By firmly placing real estate at the narrative core of growth and development, Connolly has made an important departure from most southern urban historiography. A World More Concrete provides a sophisticated, thoughtful analysis of the political economy of white supremacy in 20th century South Florida, and Connolly has produced a provocative, persuasive study that reminds us that class and race have long intersected in complicated and uncomfortable ways."

The Wall Award, established in 2000, honors the service of Bennett Wall, who served as secretary/treasurer of the Southern Historical Association for more than 33 years and as the group's president in 1988.