Recent Wilson Center Fellow Bettye Collier-Thomas Awarded OAH Book Prize
Recent Wilson Center Fellow Bettye Collier-Thomas, professor of history at Temple University, has been selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to receive the 2011 Darlene Clark Hine Award, which is given annually for the best book in African American women's and gender history.
Recent Wilson Center Fellow Bettye Collier-Thomas, professor of history at Temple University, has been selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to receive the 2011 Darlene Clark Hine Award, which is given annually for the best book in African American women's and gender history. On Saturday, March 19, OAH President David A. Hollinger and President-Elect Alice Kessler-Harris will present the prize in Houston, Texas, during the 104th annual meeting of the organization.
In her book Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion (Alfred A. Knopf), Collier-Thomas has created a history of African American women and religion that crosses denominational, class, and organization lines, from Sojourner Truth, antebellum evangelist, to Barbara Harris, first woman bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion, according to the Darlene Clark Hine Award Committee. As Christine Stansell stated in her review in the New Republic, "Some books need to be written, and this is one of them." Collier-Thomas is persuasive in her account of the importance of faith to African American slaves, freedwomen, club women, reformers, civil rights activists, and black power advocates. Faith sustained them in slavery, and it emboldened them to call forth the principles under which a so-called Christian nation should live. Observing that black women were "among the most oppressed of the oppressed," Collier-Thomas recounts that churchwomen often spoke out against sexism by their male cohorts. Combining liberation theology with feminist idealism, black clergywomen and laywomen used womanist theology to frame the struggles they encountered within their denominations and civil rights organizations. Calling out the reality of second-class citizenship but ending with a message of hope, this book is deeply researched, compellingly written, and magisterial in scope.
Founded in 1907, OAH is the largest learned society and professional organization dedicated to the teaching and study of the American past. OAH promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history. Members in the U.S. and abroad include college and university professors; students; precollegiate teachers; archivists, museum curators, and other public historians employed in government and the private sector.
