The Liberty Legacy Foundation Award is an annual book award given by the Organization of American Historians (OAH). The award goes to the best book written by a professional historian on the fights for civil rights in the United States anytime from 1776 to the present.[1] Dr. Darlene Clark Hine[2] challenged American historians to research and write on those civil rights episodes taking place in the United States before 1954 in her 2002 OAH presidential speech.[3] A committee of three OAH members, chosen by the OAH president, make the selection.[4] As of 2018, the committee chair is Paul Ortiz, with both Carol Anderson and Charles McKinney rounding out the committee.[5] The Award Winner receives a monetary prize that ranges $1000 and $2000.[6] [7] In the Award's first year (2003), a single Winner and six Finalists were named. In 2004, two Winners were named. In 2006 and 2017, one Winner and one Honorable Mention were named for each year. In 2008, one Winner and two Finalists were named.[8]
In the table below, the link on the "Author" is to the latest biographical site found. The link on the "Affiliation" is the author's workplace at the time of the award.
| Year | Author | Affiliation | Title | Publisher | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | J. Mills Thornton III | Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma | University of Alabama Press | ||
| 2004 Co-Winner | Robert Rodgers Korstad | Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth Century South | University of North Carolina Press | ||
| 2004Co-Winner | Barbara Ransby | Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision | University of North Carolina Press | ||
| 2005 | Nikhil Pal Singh | University of Washington | Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy | Harvard University Press | |
| 2006 | Matthew J. Countryman | Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia | University of Pennsylvania Press | ||
| 2007 | Thomas F. Jackson | From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice | University of Pennsylvania Press | ||
| 2008 | Michael Honey | Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign | W. W. Norton & Company | ||
| 2009 | Chris Myers Asch | U.S. Public Service Academy | The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer | The New Press | |
| 2010 | Beryl Satter | Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America | Metropolitan Books | ||
| 2011 | Chad L. Williams | Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era | University of North Carolina Press | ||
| 2012 | Tomiko Brown-Nagin | Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement | Oxford University Press | ||
| 2013 | Andrew W. Kahrl | The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South | Harvard University Press | ||
| 2014 | Susan D. Carle | Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880–1915 | Oxford University Press | ||
| 2015 | N. B. D. Connolly | A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida | University of Chicago Press | ||
| 2016 | Tanisha C. Ford | Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul | University of North Carolina Press | ||
| 2017 | Russell J. Rickford | We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination | Oxford University Press | ||
| 2018 | Ula Yvette Taylor | The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam | University of North Carolina Press |
| Year | Award Level | Author | Affiliation | Title | Publisher | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Finalist | Greta De Jong | University of Nevada, Reno | A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900-1970 | University of North Carolina Press | |
| 2003 | Finalist | independent scholar | Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975 | City Lights | ||
| 2003 | Finalist | Barbara Mills | Congress of Racial Equality, Baltimore | "Got My Mind Set on Freedom" Maryland's Story of Black and White Activism, 1663-2000 | Heritage Books, Inc. | |
| 2003 | Finalist | Jerald E. Podair | Lawrence University | Yale University Press | ||
| 2003 | Finalist | Mark Robert Schneider | UMass Boston | "We Return Fighting": The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age | Northeastern University Press | |
| 2003 | Finalist | John D. Skrentny | The Minority Rights Revolution | Belknap Press | ||
| 2006 | Honorable Mention | Emilye Crosby | A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi | University of North Carolina Press | ||
| 2008 | Finalist | Kent Germany | New Orleans After the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship and the Search for a Great Society | University of Georgia Press | ||
| 2008 | Finalist | Laurie Green | Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle | University of North Carolina Press | ||
| 2017 | Honorable Mention | Elizabeth Hinton | From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America | Harvard University Press |