Francis B. Simkins Award

Award Description

The Francis B. Simkins Award is given for recognition of the best first book by an author in the field of southern history over a two-year period. The award is sponsored jointly with Longwood University and awarded in odd-numbered years. The award for books published in 2023 and 2024 will be presented at our meeting in St. Pete Beach. Copies for consideration should be sent no later than March 1, 2025, directly to the following committee members.

2025 Award Committee

Beverly Tomek, University of Houston, Victoria
819 County Road 308
Shiner, Texas 77984

Roy Finkenbine, Detroit Mercy University
University of Detroit Mercy
McNichols Campus, Briggs 318
Detroit, MI 48221-3038

Thavolia Glymph, Duke University
Box 90719, 226 Carr Bldg.
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina 27708

Past Winners

2023 - Tamika Nunley (Co-Winner)
At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C., University of North Carolina Press

2023 - Kathryn Olivarius (Co-Winner)
Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, Harvard University Press

2021 - Wendy Gonaver
The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880, University of North Carolina Press

2019 - Caitlin Rosenthal
Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, Harvard University Press, 2018

2017 - Emily Clark
A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, University of North Carolina Press, 2016

2015 - Ellen Griffith Spears
Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution and Justice in an All-American Town, University of North Carolina Press, 2014

2013 - James Giesen (co-winner)
Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South, University of Chicago Press, 2011

2013 - Yael Sternhell (co-winner)
Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South, Harvard University Press, 2012

2011 - Mark W. Geiger
Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865, Yale University Press, 2010

2009 - Susan Youngblood Ashmore (co-winner)
Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964-1972, University of Georgia Press, 2008

2009 - Edward Bartlett Rugemer (co-winner)
Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War, Louisiana State University Press, 2008

2007 - Kevin M. Kruse
White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, Princeton University Press, 2005

2005 - Kirsten E. Wood
Masterful Women: Slaveholding Widows from the American Revolution through the Civil War, University of North Carolina Press, 2004

2003 - Brian Kelly
Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1980-1921, University of Illinois Press, 2001

2001 - Walter Johnson (co-winner)
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Harvard University Press, 1999

2001 - Jane Landers (co-winner)
Black Society in Spanish Florida, University of Illinois Press, 1999

1999 - Glenn T. Eskew
But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, University of North Carolina Press, 1997

1997 - Stephanie McCurry
Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country, Oxford University Press, 1995

1995 - Judith Kelleher Schafer
Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1994

1993 - William Cohen
At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915, Louisiana State University Press, 1991

1991 - Robin D. G. Kelley (co-winner)
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, University of North Carolina Press, 1990

1991 - Rachel N. Klein (co-winner)
Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in the South Carolina Backcountry, 1760-1808, University of North Carolina Press, 1990

1989 - Lacy K. Ford, Jr.
Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860, Oxford University Press, 1988

1987 - Allan Kulikoff
Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800, University of North Carolina Press, 1986

1985 - Michael Wayne
The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880, Louisiana State University Press, 1983

1983 - Daniel J. Singal
The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, 1919-1945, University of North Carolina Press, 1982

1981 - Jacquelyn Dowd Hall
Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching, Columbia University Press, 1979

1979 - Dena J. Epstein
Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, University of Illinois Press, 1977

1977 - Virginia Spencer Carr
The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers, Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1975