Amplifying, rewarding, and celebrating exceptional new scholarship in the field of African American history and culture.
Ana Lucia
Araujo
Finalist
Michelle Adams
Winner
Benjamin Barson
Finalist
Announcing the 2025 Winners!
WINNER!
The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North
Michelle Adams
In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why?
In The Containment, legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution.
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Finalist
Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery
Ana Lucia Araujo
During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhumane conditions. Many of them died on the way, and those who survived had to endure further suffering in the violent conditions that met them onshore.
Covering more than three hundred years, Humans in Shackles grapples with this history by foregrounding the lived experience of enslaved people in tracing the long, complex history of slavery in the Americas.
Published by University of Chicago Press
Finalist:
Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons
Benjamin Barson
Brassroots Democracy recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed.
Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes.
Published by Wesleyan University Press
10.9.25
THE 2025 MAAH STONE BOOK AWARD EVENT
AFRICAN MEETING HOUSE
BOSTON, MA
The library is open.
Visit the MAAH Stone Book Award Library to peruse the complete catalog of eligible books submitted for the award since its inception in 2017, representing a specialized collection of contemporary scholarship in all areas of African American history and culture.
Search our more than 690 books by theme, author, publisher, or year submitted.