23rd Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Award Ceremony

Please join us Thursday, February 17 for a special virtual event: The 23rd annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize.

One of the most coveted awards for the study of slavery and abolition, this $25,000 prize is sponsored jointly by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale University. The Frederick Douglass Book Prize is sponsored by a generous gift from Gilder Lehrman Center supporter Daniel Pinkel, Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Francisco.

We are thrilled to announce the two winners for this year’s award:
· Vincent Brown for Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War
· Marjoleine Kars for Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

We also are pleased to honor the third finalist for this year’s prize, Jessica Marie Johnson for Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World.

In a year in which conversations around racial justice have been in the foreground, new and exciting scholarship dealing with the legacy of slavery has never been more urgently needed.
We invite teachers, students, and history lovers to join us for this event, which will feature remarks and a Q&A with both prizewinners as well as David Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center at the MacMillan Center at Yale University.

Bringing cutting-edge scholarship to K–12 classrooms is central to the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s mission. With this in mind, teachers who have 10+ students attend this event will receive a free copy of each winning book.

We encourage teachers to offer this event as an extra-credit opportunity for their students, and use GLI History Resources for additional curriculum materials on slavery and abolition.