The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) awards an annual prize to recognize an outstanding book in the field of African American history and culture.

The selection committee received over 100 eligible books, all of which engaged archival sources while representing many disciplinary and interdisciplinary orientations. In broad terms, the ASALH Book Prize committee selects as the winner an outstanding book that models rigorous and imaginative approaches; and have clear implications for how we teach and represent specific aspects of African American history and culture as well as have the capacity to introduce important aspects of African American experiences to broad publics; The chosen book uses sharp analyses of African American history and culture to speak boldly to the contemporary moment; and engages new and/or previously underutilized archives; and uses particular experiences in African American history and culture to illuminate universal aspects of the human experience.

The ASALH Book Prize selection committee includes five jurors with Professor Karen Cook Bell, Bowie State University and Executive Council Member, serving as chair.  The jurors are: Professor Russell Rickford of Cornell University; Professor Jelani Favors of NC A&T State University; Professor Crystal Webster of the University of British Columbia; Professor Shannen Williams of the University of Dayton; and Professor J.T. Roane of Rutgers University. This selection committee received and read over 100 books and they selected nine finalists. ASALH thanks the jurors for their time and hard work!

The winner of the 2025 ASALH Book Prize is Dr. Kali Gross, for her book Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times, Seal Press.

Congratulations to all the finalists for their outstanding work!

Edda Fields-Black, Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War, Oxford University Press.

Laura E. Helton, Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History, Columbia University Press.

Patrick Parr, Malcolm Before X, University of Massachusetts Press.

Bryan Sinche, Published by the Author: Self-Publication in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature, University of North Carolina Press.

Max Felter-Kantor, DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools, University of North Carolina Press.

Christina Cecelia Davidson, Dominican Crossroads: H. C. C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation, Duke University Press.

Crystal Sanders, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, University of North Carolina Press.

Kali Gross, Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times, Seal Press.

Daniel Widener, Third Worlds Within: Multiethnic Movements and Transnational Solidarity, Duke University Press.