Three Black Authors Named Finalists for Yale’s 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University has announced the three finalists for this year’s Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Presented annually in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City, the prize recognizes the best book written in English and copyrighted in the preceding year that discusses topics surrounding slavery, resistance, or abolition. Selected from 82 total submissions, this year’s finalists are Kerri Greenidge, Sarah E. Johnson, and Emily Owens. Kerri Greenidge, Mellon Associate Professor in the department of studies in race, colonialism, and diaspora at Tufts University in Massachusetts, is the author of The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family (Liveright, 2022). The book is a counternarrative to the history of White abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimke that focuses on four generations of their Black family members and discusses the legacy of slavery through the twentieth century. At Tufts, Dr. Greenidge serve as co-director of the African American Trail Project and co-director of the Slavery, Colonialism, and Their Legacies Project. She holds a second faculty appointment in the department of history. In addition to her most recent book, she is the author of...