Meet the 2023 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists

Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History have announced the finalists for the twenty-fifth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize. This annual prize of $25,000 recognizes the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition published in the preceding year.

The 2023 Frederick Douglass Book Prize finalists are

• R. Isabela Morales, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (Oxford University Press)
• Simon P. Newman, Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London (University of London Press)
• David Silkenat, Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South (Oxford University Press)

The winner will be announced following the Douglass Prize Review Committee meeting in the fall, and the award will be presented at a celebration at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City on February 28, 2024.