The African American Intellectual History Society Pauli Murray Book Prize 2025 finalists were announced on Monday, February 17, 2025.
The African American Intellectual History Society is an organization that promotes the study and discussion of Black ideas and thought. They publish Global Black Thought, an academic journal that focuses on Black intellectual traditions.
One of their programmes is the Pauli Murray Book Prize which recognises the best book concerning Black intellectual history (broadly conceived) by a member since 2018. It is named after lawyer, author, and women’s rights activist-intellectual Pauli Murray. Previous winners have been J.T. Roane, Leslie M. Alexander, Tamika Y. Nunley, Quito Swan, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, and Christopher M. Tinson.
The committee selecting the award winners for this year is chaired by Dr. Tamika Y. Nunley (Duke University) alongside Dr. Freeden Blume Oeur (Tufts University), Dr. Ashley Robertson Preston (Howard University), and Dr. Crystal Eddins (University of Pittsburgh). The finalists are;
- Laura Helton, Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History (Columbia University Press, 2024)
- Crystal R. Sanders, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (University of North Carolina Press, 2024)
- Orisanmi Burton, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (University of California Press, 2024)
- Kellie Carter Jackson, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press, 2024)
- Erik McDuffie, The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom (Duke University Press, 2024)
In response to the listing, Orisanmi Burton withdrew his entry Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt from consideration over the organisation’s association with the Israeli apartheid regime.
His statement reads in part; This brief message serves as my official withdrawal of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression & the Long Attica Revolt from consideration for the Pauli Murray Book Prize offered by The African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). I arrive at this decision in full political alignment with the movement to free Palestine from settler colonial oppression, and with the critiques expressed in “An Open Letter to the Leadership of AAIHS.” Published in the Fall 2024 issue of Hammer & Hope, the letter offers a sharp critique of the AAIHS’s generalized silence on the US-backed, Israeli-led genocide of Palestinians. Its authors rightfully lambast the organization for “invoking a tradition rooted in anti-imperialism, international solidarity, and protest to project an image of radical politics and thought, while simultaneously remaining silent or even accommodating the brutal siege of Gaza and all of occupied Palestine.”
He goes on, “I do not want to be recognized by an academic association that is unable to positively respond to this modest call for solidarity, transparency, accountability, and humanity and it is for these reasons that I reject your nomination.”
The winner who receives a $1,500 cash prize, a featured week-long roundtable on the book in Black Perspectives, and a featured interview published in Black Perspectives will be announced at the 2025 African American Intellectual History Society Conference, which will be held from March 14-15, 2025.
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