(Black PR Wire) The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) awards an annual prize to recognize an outstanding book in the field of African American history and culture.

A call for submissions went out in Spring 2025 and the selection committee received 163 eligible books, all of which engaged archival sources while representing many disciplinary and interdisciplinary orientations. In broad term, the ASALH Book Prize committee is interested in monographs that model rigorous and imaginative approaches to this field of study; books that are beautifully written; books that have clear implications for how we teach and represent specific aspects of African American history and culture; books that have the capacity to introduce important aspects of African American experiences to broad publics; books that use sharp analyses of African American history and culture to speak boldly to the contemporary moment; books that engage new and/or previously underutilized archives; and books that use particular experiences in African American history and culture to illuminate universal aspects of the human experience.

The ASALH Book Prize selection committee includes four jurors with Professor Karen Cook Bell, Bowie State University and Executive Council Member, serving as chair.  The jurors are: Professor Jelani Favors, Vice-President, Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, United Negro College Fund; Professor Crystal Webster of the University of British Columbia; Professor Shannen Williams of the University of Dayton; and Professor J.T. Roane of Rutgers University. This selection committee received and read over 163 books and they selected ten finalists. ASALH thanks the jurors for their time and hard work!

Congratulations to all the finalists for their outstanding work!

Finalists:

1. Jarvis McInnis, Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South (Columbia University Press, 2025).
2. LaShawn Harris, Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs and the Police Killing that Galvanized New York City (Beacon Press, 2025).
3. Natanya Duncan, An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (University of North Carolina Press, 2025).
4. Ashley Farmer, Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore (Pantheon Books, 2025).
5. Christina Jessica Carney, Disreputable Women: Black Sex Economies and the Making of San Diego (University of California Press, 2025).
6. Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
7. Mary Francis Phillips, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (New York University Press, 2025).
8. Amber N. Wiley, Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025).
9. Hilary Green, Unforgettable Sacrifice: How Black Communities Remembered the Civil War (Fordham University Press, 2025).
10. Martha Jones, The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (Basic Books, 2025).

The winner(s) of the ASALH Book Prize will be announced on ASALH TV on February 17th at 7:00 pm ET. This event is part of the 2026 ASALH Black History Month Virtual Festival. For more details about go to: https://asalh.org/festival/

Source: Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)