Finalists Announced for the 2013 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

For Immediate Release: July 18, 2013
Finalists Announced for the 2013 Frederick Douglass Book Prize
New Haven, Conn.- Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for
the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, has announced the finalists
for the Fifteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most
coveted awards for the study of the African-American experience. Jointly
sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Gilder Lehrman Center for
the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, this
annual prize of $25,000 recognizes the best book on slavery, resistance,
and/or abolition.

The finalists are: Stephen Kantrowitz for More than Freedom:
Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 (The Penguin
Press); Sydney Nathans for To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker
(Harvard University Press); and Brett Rushforth for Bonds of Alliance:
Indigenous & Atlantic Slaveries in New France (University of North Carolina
Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture).

The winner will be announced following the Douglass Prize Review Committee
meeting in the fall, and the award will be presented at a celebration in New
York City in February, 2014.

This year's finalists were selected from a field of nearly one hundred
entries by a jury of scholars that included Gregory Downs, Chair (CUNY),
Graham Hodges (Colgate University), and Stephanie Smallwood (University of
Washington).

Stephen Kantrowitz's More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a
White Republic, 1829-1889 is a powerful story of the efforts of black
Bostonians to work not just to end slavery but to construct a biracial and
encompassing model of citizenship. The figures in his vivid biographies
balance pragmatism and idealism; he shows their human struggle to weigh
their hopes for the future against their sense of the possibilities of the
present. The book connects antebellum and post-bellum scholarship as the
struggles over education, access to public space, and political power before
the war helped shape the post-war vision of Reconstruction. 

In Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous & Atlantic Slaveries in New France, Brett
Rushforth offers a nuanced, supple, and convincing portrayal of the dynamic
interactions between French colonists and Indian tribes. Indian enslavement
proved to be a powerful tool for cementing alliances with tribes and
constructing a New France. Most provocatively, Rushforth intertwines the
story of Indian slavery with the better-known Atlantic slavery of Africans.
Putting the hinterlands of New France in the context of French enslavement
of Africans in the Caribbean, Rushforth explores the interconnection and
fundamental differences between the two forms.

Sydney Nathans provides an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary but
little-known woman in To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker. Raised
on the vast Cameron family plantations in North Carolina, Walker left her
children behind at age 30 to flee first into Philadelphia's free black
community and then into a network of anti-slavery activists in Boston and
Cambridge. Based upon painstaking work in vast public and private archives,
Nathans writes a sensitive exploration of Walker's persistent struggles to
free her children, her despair as her plans came to grief, and her continued
strivings even after her family's reunion. In the process we see multiple
worlds laid out with enormous care. The book illuminates not just the
individuals but the large historical events that shaped their lives.

The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in 1999 to stimulate
scholarship in the field by honoring outstanding accomplishments. Previous
winners are Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan in 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; Christopher Leslie Brown, 2007; Stephanie Smallwood,
2008; Annette Gordon-Reed, 2009; Siddharth Kara, Judith Carney, and Richard
N. Rosomoff, 2010; Stephanie McCurry, 2011; and, James Sweet, 2012.

The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the
one-time slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American
abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the nineteenth century. 

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 advance the study of all aspects of slavery and its destruction across
all borders and time. The Center seeks to foster an improved understanding
of the role of slavery, slave resistance, abolition, and their legacies 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. For further information
on events and programming, contact the center by phone (203) 432-3339, fax
(203) 432-6943, or e-mail gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in 1994 by
philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, is the nation's leading
non-profit provider of teacher training and classroom resources in the
subject of American history. Our programs span public, private, and
parochial schools across the nation, reaching students of all backgrounds.
Each year the Institute offers support and resources to thousands of
teachers, and through them, enhances the education of hundreds of thousands
of students. The Institute's programs have been recognized by awards from
the White House, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
Organization of American Historians. For further information, visit
<http://www.gilderlehrman.org/> www.gilderlehrman.org or call (646)
366-9666.

Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Yale University
PO Box 208206
New Haven, CT 06520-8206

Phone: 203-432-3339 ~ Fax: 203-432-6943
Website: www.yale.edu/glc
gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu