Frederick Douglass Book Prize Awarded in New York City
The tenth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, honoring the best new book on slavery or abolition, was awarded at the Yale Club in New York City on February 19. Stephanie Smallwood of the University of Washington, Seattle, won the prize for her book, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Harvard University Press). The prize is awarded by Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
In Saltwater Slavery, Smallwood, an associate professor of history at the University of Washington, Seattle, examines the transatlantic slave trade and the relationships between Africa and the new world.
The $25,000 award for the year’s best non-fiction book on slavery, resistance, or abolition is the most generous history prize in the field. The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the 19th century.
The dinner included remarks by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, Co-Founders and Co-Chairmen of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and David Blight, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center.
Commented Richard Gilder, “Stephanie Smallwood’s Saltwater Slavery represents an important contribution to the scholarship of the Atlantic slave trade, for it considers slavery from the viewpoint of the slave as he moves from Africa, through the Middle Passage, and at last in the Americas. Lewis Lehrman and I are proud to present her with this award in recognition of her achievement.”
“The Atlantic slave trade is an important part of our history that deserves critical examination,” said Lewis Lehrman. “Using primary sources to tell the story of slaves’ passage to the Americas, Stephanie Smallwood has produced a painstakingly researched work of the highest caliber.”
“Stephanie Smallwood’s book is at once haunting, informative, dramatic, painful to read, and bracing in its sense of learning and scholarship,” said Blight in his remarks. “A book that actually tries to get inside the imagination and experiences of the slaves themselves is not easy to find, and Saltwater Slavery is that book.”
The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in 1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field of slavery and abolition by honoring outstanding books. Previous winners include: Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, 1999; David Eltis, 2000; David Blight, 2001; Robert Harms and John Stauffer, 2002; James F. Brooks and Seymour Drescher, 2003; Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004; Laurent DuBois, 2005; Rebecca J. Scott, 2006; and Christopher Leslie Brown, 2007.
Smallwood’s book was selected from a field of over seventy-five entries by a jury of scholars that included Barrymore Anthony Bogues (Brown University), Christopher Clark (University of Connecticut), and Rebecca J. Scott (University of Michigan School of Law). The winner was selected by a review committee of representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Yale University.
In addition to Smallwood, the other finalists for the prize were Anthony E. Kaye for Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (University of North Carolina Press); Kristin Mann for Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900 (Indiana University Press); and Chandra Manning for What this Cruel War was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf Publishers).
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, a part of The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, was launched in November 1998 through a generous donation by philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Its mission is to promote the study of all aspects of slavery, especially the chattel slave system and its destruction. The Center seeks to foster an improved understanding of the role of slavery, slave resistance, and abolition in the founding of the modern world by promoting interaction and exchange between scholars, teachers, and public historians through publications, educational outreach, and other programs and events.
Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public. It helps create history-centered schools, organizes seminars and programs for educators, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, sponsors lectures by eminent historians, and administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state. The Institute also conducts awards including the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Book Prizes, and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. The Institute maintains two websites, www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org.
In Saltwater Slavery, Smallwood, an associate professor of history at the University of Washington, Seattle, examines the transatlantic slave trade and the relationships between Africa and the new world.
The $25,000 award for the year’s best non-fiction book on slavery, resistance, or abolition is the most generous history prize in the field. The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the 19th century.
The dinner included remarks by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, Co-Founders and Co-Chairmen of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and David Blight, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center.
Commented Richard Gilder, “Stephanie Smallwood’s Saltwater Slavery represents an important contribution to the scholarship of the Atlantic slave trade, for it considers slavery from the viewpoint of the slave as he moves from Africa, through the Middle Passage, and at last in the Americas. Lewis Lehrman and I are proud to present her with this award in recognition of her achievement.”
“The Atlantic slave trade is an important part of our history that deserves critical examination,” said Lewis Lehrman. “Using primary sources to tell the story of slaves’ passage to the Americas, Stephanie Smallwood has produced a painstakingly researched work of the highest caliber.”
“Stephanie Smallwood’s book is at once haunting, informative, dramatic, painful to read, and bracing in its sense of learning and scholarship,” said Blight in his remarks. “A book that actually tries to get inside the imagination and experiences of the slaves themselves is not easy to find, and Saltwater Slavery is that book.”
The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in 1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field of slavery and abolition by honoring outstanding books. Previous winners include: Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, 1999; David Eltis, 2000; David Blight, 2001; Robert Harms and John Stauffer, 2002; James F. Brooks and Seymour Drescher, 2003; Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004; Laurent DuBois, 2005; Rebecca J. Scott, 2006; and Christopher Leslie Brown, 2007.
Smallwood’s book was selected from a field of over seventy-five entries by a jury of scholars that included Barrymore Anthony Bogues (Brown University), Christopher Clark (University of Connecticut), and Rebecca J. Scott (University of Michigan School of Law). The winner was selected by a review committee of representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Yale University.
In addition to Smallwood, the other finalists for the prize were Anthony E. Kaye for Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (University of North Carolina Press); Kristin Mann for Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900 (Indiana University Press); and Chandra Manning for What this Cruel War was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf Publishers).
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, a part of The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, was launched in November 1998 through a generous donation by philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Its mission is to promote the study of all aspects of slavery, especially the chattel slave system and its destruction. The Center seeks to foster an improved understanding of the role of slavery, slave resistance, and abolition in the founding of the modern world by promoting interaction and exchange between scholars, teachers, and public historians through publications, educational outreach, and other programs and events.
Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public. It helps create history-centered schools, organizes seminars and programs for educators, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, sponsors lectures by eminent historians, and administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state. The Institute also conducts awards including the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Book Prizes, and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. The Institute maintains two websites, www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org.