He escaped bondage at 20, and lived nine years a fugitive until his freedom was purchased. The Biblical language is intentional – Douglass embraced a personal Christianity as a teenager in Baltimore, studying sermons as templates for his oratory. His travail under Covey’s yoke became Douglass’ crucifixion and resurrection.” The Pulitzer jury called the biography “a breathtaking history that demonstrates the scope of Frederick Douglass’ influence through deep research on his writings, intellectual evolution and his relationships.” Blight won an Anisfield-Wolf prize in 2012 for “American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era.”īlight states that the former slave’s great gift “is that he found ways to convert the scars Covey left on his body into words that might change the world. The historian, 70, described this book as “the biography of a voice.” A Yale University professor, Blight believes Douglass’ speeches and constant travel also made him the most heard individual of his century. Blight, 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner Blight emphasizes that Douglass – the most photographed American of the 19th century – existed as a man of words.ĭavid W.
The Pulitzer elevated Stapes, 68, for his “editorials written with extraordinary moral clarity that charted the racial fault lines in the United States at a polarizing moment in the nation’s history.” He received an Anisfield-Wolf award in 1995 for his memoir, “Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White.”įrederick Douglass, a reader suspects, also might have lauded Gordon-Reed’s work. And he quotes Frederick Douglass in another, “The Racism Behind Women’s Suffrage.” Staples cites Gordon-Reed in one column the Pulitzer judges singled out: “The Legacy of Monticello’s First Black Family,” published July 4, 2018.
Gordon-Reed, who chaired the jury, has her own Anisfield-Wolf prize for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” a 2009 winner that excavated the suppressed record of Thomas Jefferson’s black family. Three historians selected the Douglass biography: Annette Gordon-Reed, Tiya Miles and Marcus Rediker. Two more Anisfield-Wolf winners were named as Pulitzer finalists: novelist Tommy Orange, this year’s fiction winner for his debut, “There There” and historian Jill Lepore, who won an Anisfield-Wolf prize in 2006, a finalist in criticism for her writing in the New Yorker.
And Staples, an editorial writer for the New York Times, has won for a series of newspaper opinion pieces. Blight and Brent Staples – two Anisfield-Wolf Book Award recipients – discovered this week that each had won a Pulitzer Prize.īlight’s monumental biography, “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” received the Pulitzer for history.
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