Michael Thurmond’s book about the ‘father of Georgia’ followed a surprise discovery that the former enslaver was an abolitionist

Thursday night, Michael Thurmond held court in the decorous, genteel salon of the British consulate in Atlanta, describing nearly 20 years of scholarly research behind his latest work: a history of James Oglethorpe, the abolitionist founder of the Georgia colony in America.

Eight hours later, Thurmond took off his professor hat to don an austere white DeKalb county baseball cap, a reminder that he gets to tell cops and firefighters what to do. In addition to being a respected historian and the author of James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia, Thurmond is also chief executive officer of DeKalb county, leading the government of Georgia’s fourth-largest county and the largest with a Black majority.