Dale Kretz writes about the Black freedom struggle and the development of the American state. He is the author of Administering Freedom: The State of Emancipation After the Freedmen’s Bureau, published in 2022 by University of North Carolina Press. Administering Freedom won the prestigious Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award from the Organization of American Historians and was long listed for the Museum of African American History’s Stone Book Award. Research for the book was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

His writing has appeared in Jacobin, the Journal of American History, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History, the New Mexico Historical Review, the Civil War Book Review, and The Historian. His essay “People, Not ‘Voices’ or ‘Bodies,’ Make History,” was listed by Bunk History as among the Best History Writing of 2021. Kretz also serves as a historical consultant on the acclaimed PBS show Finding Your Roots.