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The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award is an American literary award dedicated to honoring written works that make important contributions to the understanding of racism and the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture.[1] Established in 1935 by Cleveland poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf and originally administered by the Saturday Review, the awards have been administered by the Cleveland Foundation since 1963.
Several awards in the categories of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, memoir/autobiography, and lifetime achievement are given out each September in a ceremony free and open to the public and attended by the honorees. Winners include Zora Neale Hurston (1943), Langston Hughes (1954), Martin Luther King Jr. (1959), Maxine Hong Kingston (1978), Wole Soyinka (1983), Nadine Gordimer (1988), Toni Morrison (1988), Ralph Ellison (1992), Edward Said (2000), and Derek Walcott (2004).
The jury has been composed of prominent American writers and scholars at least since 1991, when long-time jury chairman Ashley Montagu, a renowned anthropologist, asked poet Rita Dove and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. to help him judge the large number of books submitted annually by publishers across the disciplines. When Montagu retired in 1996, Gates assumed the chair position. In 1996, they were joined by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, writer Joyce Carol Oates and historian Simon Schama, who all retired before the 2024 awards. After Gould's death in 2002, psychologist Steven Pinker replaced him on the jury. At the 2024 awards, Pinker and Dove retired. The current jury is Natasha Trethewey (jury chair), Peter Ho Davies, Tiya Miles, Charles King, Deesha Philyaw, and Luis Alberto Urrea.
Fiction
Poetry
| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Jericho Brown | The New Testament | [5] |
| Marilyn Chin | Hard Love Province | ||
| 2016 | Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Heaven | [6] |
| 2017 | Tyehimba Jess | Olio | [7] |
| 2018 | Shane McCrae | In the Language of My Captor | [8] |
| 2019 | Tracy K. Smith | Wade in the Water | [9] |
| 2020 | Ilya Kaminsky | Deaf Republic | [10][11] |
| 2021 | Victoria Chang | Obit | [12] |
| 2022 | Donika Kelly | The Renunciations | [14] |
| 2023 | Saeed Jones | Alive at the End of the World[17] | |
| 2024 | Monica Youn | From From |
Nonfiction
| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1936 | Harold Foote Gosnell | Negro Politicians: Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago | |
| 1937 | Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon | We Europeans: A Survey of "Racial" Problems | |
| 1939 | Ralph J. Bunche | An Analysis of the Political, Economic and Social Status of the Non-European Peoples in South Africa | |
| Charles S. Johnson | The Negro College Graduate | ||
| 1940 | Edward Franklin Frazier | The Negro Family in the United States | |
| 1941 | Louis Adamic | From Many Lands | |
| 1942 | James G. Leyburn | The Haitian People | |
| Leopold Infeld | Quest: An Autobiography | ||
| 1943 | Zora Neale Hurston | Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography | |
| 1944 | Roi Ottley | New World A-Coming | |
| Maurice Samuel | The World of Sholom Aleichem | ||
| 1945 | Gunnar Myrdal | An American Dilemma | |
| 1946 | St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton | Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City | |
| Wallace Stegner and the editors of Look | One Nation | ||
| 1947 | Pauline R. Kibbe | Latin Americans in Texas | |
| 1948 | John Collier | The Indians of the Americas | |
| 1949 | J.C. Furnas | Anatomy of Paradise | |
| 1950 | S. Andhil Fineberg | Punishment Without Crime | |
| Shirley Graham | Your Most Humble Servant | ||
| 1951 | Henry Gibbs | Twilight in South Africa | |
| 1952 | Laurens Van Der Post | Venture to the Interior | |
| Brewton Berry | Race Relations | ||
| 1953 | Farley Mowat | People of the Deer | |
| Han Suyin | A Many-Splendoured Thing | ||
| 1954 | Vernon Bartlett | Struggle for Africa | |
| 1955 | Oden Meeker | Report on Africa | |
| Lyle Saunders | Cultural Differences and Medical Care | ||
| 1956 | John P. Dean and Alex Rosen | A Manual of Intergroup Relations | |
| George W. Shepherd | They Wait in Darkness | ||
| 1957 | Father Trevor Huddleston | Naught for Your Comfort | |
| Gilberto Freyre | The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization | ||
| 1958 | South African Institute of Race Relations | Handbook on Race Relations | |
| Jessie B. Sams | White Mother | ||
| 1959 | Martin Luther King Jr. | Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story | |
| George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger | Racial and Cultural Minorities:: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination | ||
| 1960 | John Haynes Holmes | I Speak for Myself | |
| Basil Davidson | The Lost Cities of Africa | ||
| 1961 | E. R. Braithwaite | To Sir, With Love | |
| Louis E. Lomax | The Reluctant African | ||
| 1962 | Dwight L. Dumond | Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America | |
| John Howard Griffin | Black Like Me | ||
| 1963 | Theodosius Dobzhansky | Mankind Evolving | |
| 1964 | Harold R. Isaacs | The New World of Negro Americans | |
| Bernard E. Olson | Faith and Prejudice | ||
| Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan | Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City | ||
| 1965 | Milton M. Gordon | Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins | |
| James M. McPherson | The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction | ||
| Abram L. Sachar | A History of the Jews, Revised Edition | ||
| James W. Silver | Mississippi: The Closed Society | ||
| 1966 | H. C. Baldry | The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought | |
| Claude Brown | Manchild in the Promised Land | ||
| Malcolm X and Alex Haley | The Autobiography of Malcolm X | ||
| Amram Scheinfeld | Your Heredity and Environment | ||
| 1967 | David Brion Davis | The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture | |
| Oscar Lewis | La Vida | ||
| 1968 | Norman Rufus Colin Cohn | Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion | |
| Robert Coles | Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear | ||
| Raul Hilberg | The Destruction of the European Jews | ||
| Erich Kahler | The Jews among the Nations | ||
| 1969 | E. Earl Baughman and W. Grant Dahlstrom | Negro and White Children: A Psychological Study in the Rural South | |
| Leonard Dinnerstein | The Leo Frank Case | ||
| Stuart Levine and Nancy O. Lurie | The American Indian Today | ||
| 1970 | Dan T. Carter | Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South | |
| Vine Deloria | Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto | ||
| Florestan Fernandes | The Negro in Brazilian Society | ||
| Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis | The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans during World War II | ||
| 1971 | Robert William July | A History of the African People | |
| Carleton Mabee | Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War | ||
| Stan Steiner | La Raza: The Mexican Americans | ||
| Anthony Wallace | The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca | ||
| 1972 | George M. Fredrickson | The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817 | |
| John S. Haller | Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900 | ||
| Donald L. Robinson | Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765-1820 | ||
| David Loye | The Healing of a Nation | ||
| Naboth Mokgatle | The Autobiography of an Unknown South African | ||
| 1973 | Pat Conroy | The Water Is Wide | |
| Betty Fladeland | Men & Brothers | ||
| Lee Rainwater | Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Family Life in a Federal Slum | ||
| 1974 | Louis Leo Snyder | The Dreyfus Case: A Documentary History | |
| Charles Duguid | Doctor and the Aborigines | ||
| Michel Fabre | The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright | ||
| Albie Sachs | Justice in South Africa | ||
| 1975 | Eugene D. Genovese | Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made | |
| Leon Poliakov | The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe | ||
| 1976 | Lucy S. Dawidowicz | The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 | |
| Thomas Kiernan | The Arabs: Their History, Aims, and Challenge to the Industrialized World | ||
| Raphael Patai and Jennifer P. Wing | The Myth of the Jewish Race | ||
| 1977 | Richard Kluger | Simple Justice: A History of Brown v. Board of Education & Black America's Struggle for Equality | |
| Michi Weglyn | Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps | ||
| 1978 | Maxine Hong Kingston | The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts | |
| Allan Chase | The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism | ||
| 1979 | Phillip V. Tobias | The Bushmen: San Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa | |
| 1980 | Richard Borshay Lee | The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society | |
| Urie Bronfenbrenner | The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design | ||
| 1981 | Carol Beckwith and Tepilit Ole Saitoti | Maasai | |
| Jamake Highwater | Song from the Earth: American Indian painting | ||
| 1982 | Geoffrey G. Field | Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain | |
| Peter J. Powell | People of the Sacred Mountain | ||
| 1983 | Richard Rodriguez | Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez | |
| Wole Soyinka | Aké: The Years of Childhood | ||
| 1984 | Jose Alcina Franch | Pre-Columbian Art | |
| Humbert S. Nelli | From Immigrants to Ethnics: The Italian Americans | ||
| 1985 | David S. Wyman | The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 | |
| 1986 | Donald Alexander Downs | Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community and the First Amendment | |
| James North | Freedom Rising | ||
| Barton Wright and Clifford Bahnimptewa | Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary | ||
| 1987 | Arnold Rampersad | The Life of Langston Hughes | |
| Gail Sheehy | Spirit of Survival | ||
| 1988 | Jeffrey Jay Foxx and Walter F. Morris Jr. | Living Maya | |
| Abigail M. Thernstrom | Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights | ||
| 1989 | Henry Louis Gates Jr. | The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers | |
| Taylor Branch | Parting the Waters: America in the King Years | ||
| George Lipsitz | A Life In The Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition | ||
| Peter Sutton | Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia | ||
| 1990 | Hugh Honour | The Image of the Black in Western Art: Part 1 | |
| 1991 | Walter A. Jackson | Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987 | |
| Forrest G. Wood | The Arrogance Of Faith: Christianity and Race in America | ||
| Carol Beckwith, Angela Fisher, and Graham Hancock | African Ark: People and Ancient Cultures of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa | ||
| 1992 | Melissa Fay Greene | Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction | |
| Peter Hayes | Lessons and Legacies I: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World | ||
| Elaine Mensh and Harry Mensh | The IQ Mythology: Class, Race, Gender, and Inequality | ||
| Marilyn Nelson | The Homeplace | ||
| 1993 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture | |
| Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas | The Civilization of the Goddess | ||
| 1994 | David Levering Lewis | W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader | |
| Ronald Takaki | A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America | ||
| 1995 | William H. Tucker | The Science and Politics of Racial Research | |
| Brent Staples | Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White | ||
| 1996 | Jonathan Kozol | Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation | |
| 1997 | James McBride | The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother | |
| 1998 | Toi Derricotte | The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey | [18] |
| 1999 | John Lewis and Michael D'Orso | Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (about the American Civil Rights Movement) | |
| 2000 | Edward W. Said | Out of Place: A Memoir | |
| 2001 | David Levering Lewis | W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 | |
| F. X. Toole | Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner | ||
| 2002 | Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and Annette Gordon-Reed | Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir | |
| Quincy Jones | Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones | ||
| 2003 | Samantha Power | A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide | |
| 2004 | Adrian Nicole LeBlanc | Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx | |
| Ira Berlin | Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves | ||
| 2005 | A. Van Jordan | Macnolia: Poems | |
| Geoffrey C. Ward | Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson | ||
| 2006 | Jill Lepore | New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan | |
| 2007 | Scott Reynolds Nelson | Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: the Untold Story of an American Legend | |
| 2008 | Ayaan Hirsi Ali | Infidel: My Life[lower-alpha 1] | [3] |
| 2009 | Annette Gordon-Reed | The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family | |
| 2011 | David Eltis and David Richardson | Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade | |
| Isabel Wilkerson | The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration | ||
| 2012 | David Livingstone Smith | Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others | [19] |
| David Blight | American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era | ||
| 2013 | Andrew Solomon | Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity | |
| 2014 | Ari Shavit | My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel | [4] |
| 2015 | Richard S. Dunn | A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Virginia and Jamaica | [5] |
| 2016 | Lillian Faderman | The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle | [6] |
| Brian Seibert | What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing | ||
| 2017 | Margot Lee Shetterly | Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race | [7] |
| 2018 | Kevin Young | Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News | [8] |
| 2019 | Andrew Delbanco | The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War | [9] |
| 2020 | Charles King | Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century | [10][11] |
| 2021 | Vincent Brown | Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of An Atlantic Slave War | [12] |
| Natasha Trethewey | Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir | ||
| 2022 | Tiya Miles | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | [13][14] |
| George Makari | Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia | ||
| 2023 | Matthew F. Delmont | Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad[20] | |
| 2024 | Ned Blackhawk | The Rediscovery of America |
Lifetime achievement
| Year | Recipient | Ref. |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Dorothy West | |
| 1997 | Albert L. Murray | |
| 1998 | Gordon Parks | |
| 1999 | John Hope Franklin | |
| 2000 | Ernest Gaines | |
| 2001 | Lucille Clifton | |
| 2002 | Jay Wright | |
| 2003 | Adrienne Kennedy | |
| 2004 | Derek Walcott | |
| 2005 | August Wilson | |
| 2006 | William Demby | |
| 2007 | Taylor Branch | |
| 2008 | William Melvin Kelley | [21] |
| 2009 | Paule Marshall | |
| 2010 | Elizabeth Alexander | |
| 2010 | William Julius Wilson | |
| 2010 | Oprah Winfrey | |
| 2011 | John Edgar Wideman | |
| 2012 | Wole Soyinka | |
| 2012 | Arnold Rampersad | |
| 2013 | Wole Soyinka | |
| 2014 | Sir Wilson Harris | [4] |
| George Lamming | ||
| 2015 | David Brion Davis | [5] |
| 2016 | Orlando Patterson | [6] |
| 2017 | Isabel Allende | [7] |
| 2018 | N. Scott Momaday | [8] |
| 2019 | Sonia Sanchez | [9] |
| 2020 | Eric Foner | [10][11] |
| 2021 | Samuel R. Delany | [12] |
| 2022 | Ishmael Reed | [13][14] |
| 2023 | Charlayne Hunter-Gault | [13][14][22] |
| 2024 | Maxine Hong Kingston |
Special Achievement Award
- 1992 – Ralph Ellison for Invisible Man[2]
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