BY ANN CIPPERLY
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA— Keith Hebert, the Draughon Professor of Southern History at Auburn University, will speak at the Lunch Break Lecture Series at noon on Sept. 30 at the Museum of East Alabama.
He has published several award-winning books on the history of the Civil War, including “Cornerstone of the Confederacy,” which won the 2023 Georgia Historical Society Book Award.
Hebert received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Educator of the Year Award in 2025 in recognition of his teaching and community outreach.
Hebert is writing a history of the 19th-century origins of professional wrestling. His talk at the museum will focus on this latest project with the theme, “The Deadly Origins of American Sports Entertainment: The 1868 Murder of Wrestler Uzile Prickett.”
“I’m looking at the 19th century origins of this mainstay in American popular culture,” Hebert said. “In particular, my talk will focus on the story of Uzile Prickett. He was a Civil War era wrestler/con man who often collaborated with African American performers to cheat large crowds of white men out of their lucrative gambling wagers.
“After a famous match held at a Nashville racetrack, Prickett and his African American partner, Simon Thompson, stole thousands of dollars from gamblers who believed the worked/fake wrestling match was real. One of those angry gamblers tracked Prickett down several weeks later outside Cincinnati, Ohio, and murdered him.”
Hebert added his presentation will cover professional wrestling’s origins and its connections to other forms of popular culture at the time, such as theater and other professional sports.
He will also speak on what evolving entertainment reveals about American culture at that time.
“Generally, I argue that professional wrestling gained a foothold in American entertainment because it gave audiences a form of escape that on the surface resembled folk forms of athletic competition, but behind the scenes functioned more like a theatrical production,” Hebert said. “However, despite constant accusations of being worked/fake, fans continued to patronize wrestling because it offered them a unique form of cultural expression, particularly among working-class members across the country.”
Hebert joined the Auburn University faculty in 2014, where he directs the department’s public history certificate program and offers courses in public history and Southern history.
He won the 2019 American Library Association Choice Award for Top 75 Community College publications.
The Museum of East Alabama is located at 121 S. Ninth St. in downtown Opelika. Kylie Hogue is the curator and executive director of the museum. For further information, call (334) 749-2751.
