Five Finalists Chosen For The Lapidus Center’s Inaugural Harriet Tubman Prize To Honor Books Examining Slavery in the Atlantic World

The winner of the award – given by the Schomburg Center’s Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery – will be announced in November.

OCTOBER 3, 2016 – Five finalists have been selected for the inaugural Harriet Tubman Prize, a new award that honors non-fiction books examining the slave trade, slavery, or anti-slavery in the Atlantic World. Presented by the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, the prize of $7,500 will be awarded to one of the following distinguished works:

  • From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Rio de la Plata by Alex Borucki (University of New Mexico Press) – Borucki analyzes the lives of Africans and their descendants in Montevideo and Buenos Aires from the late colonial era to the first decades of independence, showing how enslaved Africans created social identities based on their common experiences, ranging from surviving together the Atlantic and coastal forced passages on slave vessels to serving as soldiers in the independence-era black battalions;

  • Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841-1844by Aisha K. Finch (University of North Carolina Press) - Finch demonstrates how organized slave resistance – particularly  in the underground rebel movement, largely composed of Africans living on farms and plantations in rural western Cuba - became critical to the unraveling of slavery and colonial power during the 19th century;

  • Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South by Jeff Forret (Louisiana State University Press) - Forret challenges notions of slave communities as sites of unwavering harmony and solidarity. His analysis of slave conflicts in the Old South examines narratives of violence within slave communities, opening a new line of inquiry into the study of American slavery;

  • Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1875 by Patrick Rael (The University of Georgia Press) - Rael immerses readers in the mix of social, geographic, economic, and political factors that shaped the unique decline of American slavery. Rael shows how African Americans - both enslaved and free-  fueled by revolutionary ideals of self-rule and universal equality, slowly turned American opinion against the slave interests in the South;

  • The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 by Calvin Schermerhorn (Yale University Press) - Schermerhorn views the development of modern American capitalism through the window of the 19th century interstate slave trade. Schermerhorn details the anatomy of slave supply chains and the chains of credit and commodities that intersected with them in the pre–Civil War United States, and explores how an institution that destroyed lives and families contributed to the growth of the American capitalist economy.

The finalists were selected by a Readers Committee of eleven scholars and librarians, which evaluated over thirty books submitted for consideration that were published in 2015. The winner of the first Harriet Tubman Prize will be chosen by a Selection Committee and will receive the award - -on December 12 at the Schomburg Center.

The members of the Selection Committee are Kathleen Bethel, African American Studies Librarian at Northwestern University; Greg Grandin, award-winning Professor of History at New York University, and Charles R. Johnson, award-winning novelist, essayist, and playwright and Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and English at Washington university.

“There is a new interest in slavery in film, television, and fiction,” notes award-winning historian Sylviane A. Diouf, the Director of the Lapidus Center, “but the fantastic scholarship that undergirds it all is much less known although it has been around for many years. The Harriet Tubman Prize and the scholars’ conversations we offer are meant to help bring this history to a larger public.”

The mission of the Lapidus Center – funded by a generous $2.5 million gift from Ruth and Sid Lapidus – is to generate and disseminate scholarly knowledge on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery in the Atlantic World. The Center offers fellowships, public programs, and has a collection of over 450 rare books and other print items related to slavery, donated by Sid Lapidus, who continues to add to the collection.

The Center is currently taking submissions for the 2017 Harriet Tubman Prize. More information is available at http://www.lapiduscenter.org/harriet-tubman-prize.

The Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery is part of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at The New York Public Library. Its mission is to generate and disseminate scholarly knowledge on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery pertaining to the Atlantic World. More information on the Center can be found at www.lapiduscenter.org

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of The New York Public Library, is generally recognized as one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world. For over 90 years the Center has collected, preserved, and provided access to materials documenting black life, and promoted the study and interpretation of the history and culture of peoples of African descent. Educational and Cultural Programs at the Schomburg Center complement its research services and interpret its collections. Seminars, forums, workshops, staged readings, film screenings, performing arts programs, and special events are presented year-round. More information about Schomburg’s collections and programs can be found at www.schomburgcenter.org.