Benjamin Hooks Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work on the American Civil Rights Movement and its Legacy

Solicitation for 2012 Book Nominations

Benjamin Hooks National Book Award for

Outstanding Scholarly Work on the American Civil Rights Movement and its Legacy

www.memphis.edu/benhooks

The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis (Memphis, TN) is soliciting nominations for its annual National Book Award. In 1996, University of Memphis officials received approval from the Tennessee Board of Regents to create the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change. The Institute is dedicated to Teaching, Studying, and Promoting Civil Rights and Social Change.  Hooks Institute archives include Dr. Hooks’s personal papers, which are housed in the Mississippi Valley Collection in the University’s McWherter Library.

Deadline: December 31, 2012

A panel of judges representing various disciplines and academic institutions in Memphis awards the annual prize for the book that best furthers understanding of the American Civil Rights Movement and its legacy.  An award of $1,000 will be made to the author(s). The recipient(s) of the award will receive an invitation to deliver an address in the Hooks Institute Lecture Series during the 2013-2014 academic year at the University of Memphis.

Eligibility: Books published in calendar year 2012 are eligible for the awards.

Only originally published non-fictional material will be considered. 

Submissions:Please provide full contact information for the authors(s) and nominator(s), to include an email address, mailing address, and telephone number, and submit one copy of the nominated book (postmarked by December 31, 2012) to The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, Attn: Benjamin L. Hooks Book Award Nomination, 107 Scates Hall, The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, 38152-3530.

Note, the Hooks Institute reserves the right to exclude from consideration for its Award any nominated book where the submitter fails to provide the contact information for the nominator and author.

Finalists will be asked to submit additional copies to a panel of judges representing various disciplines and academic institutions in Memphis.

For questions or comments: Please contact Book Award Committee Chair, Aram Goudsouzian, Professor, University of Memphis, Department of History, at 901-678-2520 or via email at agoudszn@memphis.edu 

2010-2011 Benjamin L. Hooks National Book Award Recipients

2010    Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC

Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC by Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod, Norman Noonan,Judy Richardson, Betty Garman Robinson, Jean Smith Young, and Dorothy M. Zellner (University of Illinois Press, 2010)

2011   Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking 2011)

The Committee chose Malcolm X (Viking) as the winner. It is a model for historical biography. Over the course of his life, the man born Malcolm Little donned “multiple masks.” He was a “hustler,” a prisoner, a preacher, a celebrity, a villain, and a hero. He earned his place in history as a scathing critic of American race relations, a counterpoint to the nonviolent civil rights movement, and a voice of black nationalism that stretched throughout the world. Marable deftly charted Malcolm X’s political evolution, while also revealing extraordinary details about his personal life.   Marable’s Malcolm X was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in April 2012.

Tragically, Marable, a longtime professor at Columbia University, died just before the publication of his masterwork. At a date to be announced later, a representative from Viking Press, the publisher of Malcolm X, will speak on Marable’s biography of Malcolm X at the University of Memphis as part of the Hooks Institute lecture series.