Frederick Douglass Prize facts for kids
The Frederick Douglass Book Prize is a special award given every year to the best non-fiction book written in English. This prize honors books that teach us about slavery, how people fought against it, and movements to end it. It's a big award, worth $25,000!
This prize is given by two groups: the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.
Who Was Frederick Douglass?
Frederick Douglass was an amazing person who lived from 1818 to 1895. He was born into slavery but escaped and became a famous writer, speaker, and leader. He fought tirelessly to end slavery and for equal rights for all people. The prize is named after him to honor his important work and legacy.
About the Prize
The Frederick Douglass Book Prize celebrates books that help us understand the history of slavery and the brave people who worked to end it. These books are important because they share true stories and facts about a difficult time in history. They also show how people fought for freedom and justice.
Past Winners of the Prize
Many talented authors have won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Their books cover different aspects of slavery and abolition, from personal stories to wider historical events. Here is a list of the past winners:
Source: The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 (joint) | Tiya Miles | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake |
| Jennifer L. Morgan | Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic | |
| 2021 (joint) | Vincent Brown | Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War |
| Marjoleine Kars | Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast | |
| 2020 | Sophie White | Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana |
| 2019 | Amy Murrell Taylor | Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps |
| 2018 (joint) | Erica Armstrong Dunbar | Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge |
| Tiya Miles | The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits | |
| 2017 | Manisha Sinha | The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition |
| 2016 | Jeff Forret | Slave against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South |
| 2015 | Ada Ferrer | Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution |
| 2014 | Christopher Hager | Word By Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing |
| 2013 | Sydney Nathans | To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker |
| 2012 | James H. Sweet | Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World |
| 2011 | Stephanie McCurry | Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South |
| 2010 | Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff | In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World |
| 2010 Second Prize |
Siddharth Kara | *** Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery |
| 2009 | Annette Gordon-Reed | The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family |
| 2008 | Stephanie E. Smallwood | Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora |
| 2007 | Christopher Leslie Brown | Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism |
| 2006 | Rebecca J. Scott | Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery |
| 2005 | Laurent Dubois | A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean |
| 2004 | Jean Fagan Yellin | Harriet Jacobs: A Life |
| 2003 | Seymour Drescher | The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation |
| 2003 Second Prize |
James F. Brooks | Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands |
| 2002 | Robert W. Harms | The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade |
| 2002 Second Prize |
John Stauffer | The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race |
| 2001 | David Blight | Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory |
| 2000 | David Eltis | The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas |
| 1999 | Ira Berlin | Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery |
| 1999 Second Prize |
Philip D. Morgan | Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry |
See also
- List of history awards
