Yale University: Finalists Announced for the 2009 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Press Release

New Haven, Conn., Jul 30, 2009 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) — MNCOF | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating — Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has announced the finalists for the 11th Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most coveted awards for the study of the African-American experience.

The finalists are Thavolia Glymph for ‘Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household’ (Cambridge University Press); Annette Gordon-Reed, ‘The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family’ (W.W. Norton and Company); and Jacqueline Jones, ‘Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War ‘(Alfred A. Knopf Publishers).

The $25,000 annual award for the year’s best non-fiction book on slavery, resistance, and/or abolition is the most generous history prize in its field. The prize winner will be announced following the Douglass Prize Review Committee meeting in September, and the award will be presented at a dinner at the Yale Club of New York on February 25, 2010.

African-American Woman Makes History

by Christine Le, Celebrity Cafe

On Wednesday night, Annette Gordon-Reed made history when she became the first African-American woman to win the National Book Award in the nonfiction category. The 59th awards took place on Wall Street, New York, with nearly 700 attendees, according to the NY Times.

Gordon-Reed’s book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, is the result of extensive research and interest in the biography of three generations of a slave family owned by Thomas Jefferson (NY Times). Having grown up in partially segregated East Texas with politically active parents, Gordon-Reed delved into a book on Jefferson’s life, titled Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait, immersing herself in his political philosophies. She became deeply intrigued by the relations between Jefferson and the Hemings family (NJ.com).