What the jurors say…
WINNER
Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street
Victor Luckerson
This book is public and local history at its finest. Told by a journalist and “local historian,” Built From the Fire is a deeply researched and rich history that brings to light the depth and complexity of a story we thought we already knew. With great care and pride, Luckerson helps us move beyond Tulsa as tragedy to better understand the Black people who built and rebuilt Tulsa over generations.
Built from Fire allows us see the internal dynamics of a community beyond the physical spaces they occupied. On the occasion of the 100 year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Luckerson offers us a three-dimensional view of the community’s history, endurance, and survival. In doing so, he powerfully conveys a human story that pulls back the veil on the violence of 1921 to reclaim Black subjectivity on its own terms. Too many books on Tulsa obscure rather than reveal. This book is a corrective in that regard, one that lifts up Black citizens as so much more than victims of violences, and challenges readers to consider the legacies of those proud neighborhoods that Black people built across the United States.
FINALISTS
Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar
Barbara D. Savage
The subject of this book, Merze Tate, is a fascinating and highly original study of a single underappreciated figure whose life touched so many facets of Black history. The only monograph published about Merze Tate, it is both rare and revelatory in its subject and findings. We appreciate the unique approach of writing about an underrecognized Black woman scholar in a moment when so many authors are seeking to cash in on the financial opportunities of the post-George Floyd literary marketplace with quick lightly-researched books about well-known Black figures. This book is a labor of love. Savage helps us pay dutiful attention to Tate’s life, and the results reveal a profound story of a Black woman intellectual making her way in the twentieth century world. We’re particularly excited that this is a wonderful book among a growing number of books about black women academics in recent years. Beyond this, we think the book is exemplary of the spirit of our award in that it recognizes both the work of Barbara Savage as a historian and scholar in our field and of the historic place of Merze Tate in that same Intellectual genealogy.
The book is beautifully-written, well-researched, and accessible. We walk away from it with a sense of who Tate was and how her work impacted those around her and the academy as a whole. A “winning” factor for the jurors is whether a book could have been written as well by someone else. Savage is alone in her command of Tate’s life and work, especially with the range of topics she covers and in the way she connects Tate’s interest in globalization and the contemporary moment.
The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War
Chad L. Williams
Williams’s The Wounded World is a deeply compelling exploration into a failure, of sorts, of W.E.B. DuBois to complete his study of Black soldiers during World War I. It’s such a compelling approach—a celebration as well as a lamentation—that probes the misjudgment and disappointment of one of Black America’s most influential writers. Williams captures a tension rooted in the dashed hopes of a great thinker, one whose hope and vision for Black American mirrored that of many African Americans themselves. But that hope was quickly extinguished by the powers of global white supremacy. Williams masterfully takes us through the mind and career of DuBois as a stand-in for Black leadership in 1910 and 1920s, an era of great achievement but also deep disappointment for African Americans.
Finding a way to write a full-length book about Du Bois that manages to say something new or at least throw into relief a still-largely neglected aspects of his work seems to be a feat in and of itself. Williams’s book is remarkable for its wealth of detail and archival support. It allows us to revisit and rethink a larger aspect of that history, which is the role and legacy of the black soldiers who fought in the First World War and the quest for citizenship based on their service to the nation. .