The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Published October 2022 from Viking Books, Pre-order available now. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of […]

Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers, a digital book published by Stanford University Press (2019), explores everyday lives of African Americans in the twentieth century. Drawing on an archive of digitized African-American newspapers, Matthew F. Delmont guides readers through a wealth of primary resources that reveal how the Black press popularized African-American history and […]

My second book, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation, was  published by University of California Press in 2016. In the decades after Brown v Board of Education, busing became one of the nation’s most controversial civil rights issues. Why Busing Failed is the first book to examine battles over […]

American Bandstand, one of the most popular television shows ever, broadcast from Philadelphia in the late fifties, a time when that city had become a battleground for civil rights. Counter to host Dick Clark’s claims that he integrated American Bandstand, this book reveals how the first national television program directed at teens discriminated against black […]

Making Roots: A Nation Captivated, was published in August 2016 by University of California Press.  This is the first book length study of Roots. Roots, published by Doubleday in the fall of 1976 and broadcast by ABC in the winter of 1977, was read by millions and watched by millions more, but today, Roots is neither […]

Leveraging new media platforms for scholarly communication is also important to me as a means of outreach.  I learned how to use the Scalar multimedia-authoring platform as a fellow in the NEH Digital Humanities summer seminar at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy in 2011.  Since then, I have created Scalar companion websites for each of […]

“Proposed new GI Bill targets racial inequities,” CBS Evening News, December 27, 2021 “Lessons from the Derek Chauvin verdict,” CBS Sunday Morning, April 25, 2021 “‘Trying To Reckon Honestly’: Dartmouth Prof. On The Evolution Of Black History Month” (Vermont Public Radio), February 15, 2021 “Joe Biden On Race: What The Democratic Presidential Nominee Has Said […]

I became a Professor because I love teaching. As a teacher, I want my students to see the study of history as an ongoing endeavor in which they play an important part.  I create hands-on courses that provide spaces for students to develop their own ideas and opinions through primary source research, critical thinking, reading, […]