Frederick Douglass Book Prize

2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Submissions

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History are pleased to announce the twenty-sixth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, an annual award for the most outstanding non-fiction book in English on the subject of slavery, resistance, and/or abolition. This year’s prize will accept submissions of books copyrighted in the year 2023. Please note that works related to the Civil War are acceptable only if their primary focus relates to slavery or emancipation. Only books copyrighted in 2023 will be considered.

Submission guidelines are available. The deadeline for submissions is Friday, May 3rd, 2024. To request the submission guidelines, send an inquiry with Frederick Douglass Book Prize 2024 in the subject line to: gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu

Yale Announces 2023 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners



R. Isabela Morales and Simon P. Newman

November 14, 2023


New Haven, Conn.— Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition today has announced the finalists for the twenty-fifth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most coveted awards for the study of slavery. The 2023 Prize will be shared by two scholars. The co-winners are R. Isabela Morales for “Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom” (Oxford University Press) and Simon P. Newman for “Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London” (University of London Press).


 


This annual prize, jointly sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) at the MacMillan Center at Yale University, recognizes the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition published in the preceding year. The $25,000 prize, shared by the two winners, will be presented to Morales and Newman at an award ceremony sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute at Trinity Church in New York City on February 28, 2024.


 


From a total of 78 submissions, the finalists were selected by a jury of scholars that included Kerry Ward (Chair), Associate Professor of History, Rice University; Trevor Burnard, Professor and Director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull; and Waldo E. Martin, Alexander F. & May T. Morrison Professor of American History & Citizenship, University of California, Berkeley.


 



 

Sponsored by

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

and

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History




The Frederick Douglass Book Prize is made possible by a generous gift

from Gilder Lehrman Center supporter Daniel Pinkel,

Professor Emeritus  at the University of California San Francisco.




The Gilder Lehrman Center is supported by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.