TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A history professor and author of an award winning book on the antebellum slave market will give a public talk at The University of Alabama Thursday, Feb. 24 at 7:30 p.m. in ten Hoor Hall, room 30.

Dr. Walter Johnson, associate professor of history at New York University, will present “Tales of Mississippian Empire.” The talk will focus on the 1851 effort to overthrow the Spanish colonial government in Cuba by a group of New Orleans filibusterers led by the expatriate General Narciso Lopez.

The talk is the ninth Summersell Lecture in Southern History and is sponsored by the Summersell Fund in Southern History and the department of history.

Johnson, who holds a doctorate in history from Princeton, authored “Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market.” Published by Harvard University Press in 1999, it won multiple national prizes: the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association, the Avery O. Craven Award and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Book Prize of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

Johnson’s research interests include slavery and commerce and culture on the 19th century Mississippi River.

The history department is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state with 6,600 students and 360 faculty. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.