Birth Date: | May 27, 1941 |
Death Date: | June 5, 2018 |
Ira Berlin | |
Alma Mater: | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
Workplaces: | University of Maryland |
Doctoral Students: | Jessica Marie Johnson |
Ira Berlin (May 27, 1941 – June 5, 2018[1]) was an American historian, professor of history at the University of Maryland, and former president of Organization of American Historians.
Berlin wrote the books Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998) and Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (2003).
Berlin grew up in Bronx, New York, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He wrote extensively on American history and the larger Atlantic world in the 18th and 19th centuries. Berlin focused in particular on the history of slavery in the United States. His first book, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974), was awarded the Best First Book Prize by the National Historical Society.[2]
Berlin's work is concerned with what he termed the "striking diversity" in African-American life under slavery. He argues that this diversity is especially evident with attention to the differences in African-American life under slavery across geography and time.[3] In his 1998 book Many Thousands Gone, which covers the history of North American slavery through the 18th century, Berlin differentiates among four regions and their respective forms of slavery: the Chesapeake, the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, the Lower Mississippi Valley, and the North. He further differentiates each of these regions across three distinct "generations," emphasizing shifts over time. Berlin argues that geographic and temporal differences in the first two centuries of North American slavery had important consequences for African American culture and society.
He founded the Freedmen and Southern Society Project and served as director until 1991. The project's multi-volume Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation has twice been awarded the Thomas Jefferson Prize of the Society for the History of the Federal Government, as well as the J. Franklin Jameson Prize of the American Historical Association for outstanding editorial achievement (October, 1999). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.[4]
In 2003, Berlin was the chief advisor for the HBO documentary Unchained Memories. In 2007, he was an advising scholar for the award-winning PBS documentary Prince Among Slaves, produced by Unity Productions Foundation.
Film | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Year | Film | Role | Other notes | |
2005 | Slavery and the Making of America, PBS | Academic Advisor | ||
2003 | Unchained Memories | Chief advisor | ||
2007 | Prince Among Slaves | Advising scholar |