Dr. Maurice Hobson

Dr. Maurice Hobson is an Associate Professor of African American Studies and Historian at Georgia State University. He earned the Ph.D. degree in History, focusing in African American History and 20th Century U.S. History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are grounded in the fields of African American history, 20th Century U.S. history, comparative labor, African American studies, oral history and ethnography, urban and rural history, political economy, and popular cultural studies. He is the author of award-winning book titled The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta with the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Hobson engages the social sciences and has created a new paradigm called the Black New South that explores the experiences of black folk in the American South, with national and international implications, since WWII. For this, he has served as an expert witness in court cases and as a voice of insight for public historical markers, monuments and museum exhibitions.

In popular media, Dr. Hobson was consulted for the Netflix documentary “The Art of Organized Noize,” which featured the Atlanta production team that changed the sound of hip-hop with their work with OutKast and Goodie Mob. Also, he was the chief historian for the documentary “Maynard,” which detailed the life and times of the honorable Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr., Atlanta’s first black mayor. He is also the consulting historian for the “ESPN 30 For 30: Vick” documentary detailing the controversial career of NFL quarterback Michael Vick. Most recently, he served as a consulting producer and historian for HBO Documentaries’ “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children,” which details the dark history of the Atlanta Child Murders, where Atlanta’s most vibrant yet vulnerable population—its poor black children—were being hunted, kidnapped, murdered and left in fields around the Atlanta metro-area. Currently, he serves as the chief-historian for the award-winning iHeartRadio podcast titled “Fight Night and the Million Dollar Heist,” a true-crime podcast series detailing the infamous armed robbery after Muhammad Ali’s historic 1970 comeback fight. He has two forthcoming documentaries; “Downing of a Flag: A Documentary, A Film” detailing the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag in South Carolina and “A Man Named Bo, “ a documentary  on the life, career, and impact of Judge Marvin S. Arrington, Sr of Atlanta.

After graduating from Selma High School in Selma, Alabama, he went on to the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he was also a student-athlete, playing Fullback/H-Back for the Blazer Football team. He earned a B.A. Degree in History and African American Studies from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1999.