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Past Winners

Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners

2023

Twenty Fifth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners:

R. Isabela Morales for “Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom

Simon P. Newman for “ Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London

2022

Twenty Fourth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners:

Tiya Miles for “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake”

Jennifer L. Morgan for “Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic”

2021

Twenty Third Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners:

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”

2020

Twenty Second Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Sophie White, “Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana” 

2019

Twenty First Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners:

Amy Murrell Taylor, “Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps”

2018

Twentieth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners:

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

Nineteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition
2016

Eighteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Jeff Forret, Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South

2015

Seventeenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution

Finalists:

Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown: An African American Life

Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World

More about the 2015 winner, finalists, and jury

VIDEO

2014

Sixteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Christopher Hager, Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing

Finalists:

Camillia Cowling, Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832

More about the 2014 winner, finalists, and jury

2013

Fifteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Sydney Nathans, To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker

Finalists:

Stephen Kantrowitz, More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889

Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous & Atlantic Slaveries in New France

More about the 2013 winner, finalists, and jury

2012

Fourteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

James Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World

Finalists:

Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights

R. Blakeslee Gilpin, John Brown Still Lives: America’s Long Reckoning with Violence, Equality, and Change

Carla L. Peterson, Black Gotham: A Family History of Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City

More about the 2012 winner, finalists, and jury

2011

Thirteenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South

Finalists:

Nicolas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation, and British Society at the End of Slavery

Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America

More about the 2011 winner, finalists, and jury

2010

Twelfth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winners:

Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World

Siddharth Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

Finalists:

Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War Against Slavery

More about the 2010 winner, finalists, and jury

2009

Eleventh Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Finalists:

Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household

Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War

More about the 2009 winner, finalists, and jury

2008

Tenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Finalists:

Anthony E. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South

Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900

Chandra Manning, What this Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War

More about the 2008 winner, finalists, and jury

2007

Ninth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Finalists:

Matt D. Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle Against Atlantic Slavery

Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Freedom

More about the 2007 winner, finalists, and jury

2006

Eighth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Rebecca J. Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery

Finalists:

Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life

Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820-1860

More about the 2006 winner, finalists, and jury

2005

Seventh Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804

Finalists:

Claude A. Clegg III, The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia

Melvin Patrick Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War

Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’ 1727-1892

Shane White and Graham White, The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons and Speech

More about the 2005 winner, finalists, and jury

2004

Sixth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life

Finalists:

Stephen Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration

James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770

John Wood Sweet, for Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830

More about the 2004 winner, finalists, and jury

2003

Fifth Annual Frederick Douglass Book First Prize Winner:

Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation

Second Prize:

James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands

Honorable Mention:

Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863

Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North

More about the 2003 winners and jury

2002

The Fourth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade

Second Prize ($10,000)

John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race

Honorable Mention

Michael Salman, The Embarrassment of Slavery: Controversies over Bondage and Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines

More about the 2002 winners and jury

2001

Third Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

Special Commendation for:

The late Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery

More about the 2001 winner and jury

2000

Second Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner:

David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas

More about the 2000 winner and jury

1999

First Prize: Ira Berlin Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery

Second Prize: Philip D. Morgan Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry

First Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Recipients:

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry

Finalists:

Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement

Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790

Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation

Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’: African-American Expressive Culture, from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit

More about the 1999 winners, finalists, and jury