Littleton-Griswold Prize
The Littleton-Griswold Prize is an annual award for the best book in any subject on the history of American law and society, broadly defined. In 1961, the Littleton-Griswold Fund Committee created the prize for studies in the legal history of the American colonies and of the United States prior to 1900. The prize was not awarded, however, until 1966, and was abolished the following year. In 1985, the Council revived the prize and expanded the scope to cover all of American history.
The current prize amount is $1,000. See the list of past recipients.
The general rules for submission are:
- Only books of high scholarly and literary merit will be considered.
- Books with a copyright of 2022 will be eligible for consideration for the 2023 award.
- Nomination submissions may be made by an author or by a publisher. Publishers may submit as many entries as they wish. Authors or publishers may submit the same book for multiple AHA prizes.
- Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Littleton-Griswold Prize Entry.” Print copies preferred unless otherwise indicated. If only e-copy is available, please contact review committee members beforehand to arrange submission format.
Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2023, to be eligible for the 2023 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2023 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2024 AHA annual meeting in San Francisco.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
2022 Littleton-Griswold Prize
Kate Masur, Northwestern University
Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, From the Revolution to Reconstruction (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Until Justice Be Done shines a clear and powerful light on the often-overlooked antebellum civil rights movement to reveal the essential role of Black activists and their white allies in shaping the political and legal conditions of possibility for the 14th Amendment and racial equality. Ranging expertly over multiple archives and subfields, Kate Masur shows that the Reconstruction laws were not Congress’s hastily improvised response to southern efforts to return freedpeople to the condition of slavery, as most historians have assumed. Rather, they had deep roots in free Black communities’ response to the enactment of racist laws in the northern states, decades before the Civil War. As engrossing as it is exigent, Until Justice Be Done is a tour de force.