Rate My Professor Marcy Sacks

Sacks is the author of two books: Joe Louis: Sports and Race in Twentieth Century America (Routledge, 2018), funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Her key publications include the award-winning article “ ‘I Shall Forward to You My Contraband’: Tracing Wartime Black Movement North Through an Incomplete Archive” (Civil War History, December 2024), which received the 2025 John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article in the journal; “ ‘They Are Truly Marvelous Cats’: The Importance of Companion Animals to U.S. Soldiers during the Civil War” (Journal of the Civil War Era, June 2021); and “Speaking Through Silence? Whites’ Efforts to Make Meaning of Joe Louis” in Cultures of Boxing (Peter Lang, 2015). She has received a Residency Research Fellowship at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Historical Studies (2006-2007), Albion College’s Faculty Diversity Award (2003), and multiple faculty development grants. Sacks’ public scholarship includes blog posts on the history of policing in New York City, a presentation at Lincoln Center on San Juan Hill, contributions to a documentary on the neighborhood, and a workshop for teachers at New York City’s Tenement Museum. Her current book projects are “There is Nothing Like Having a Slave: White Union Soldiers’ Racial Fantasies during the U.S. Civil War” and “The Other Side of Reconstruction: Black Northerners Confront the Aftermath of Southern Emancipation.”