The Lillian Smith Book Awards are sponsored by the Southern Regional Council, University of Georgia Libraries, DeKalb County Public Library/Georgia Center for the Book and Piedmont University
2024 Winners
- Susan Crawford, Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm, Pegasus Books
- Victor Luckerson, Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street, Random House
2023 Winners
- Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, Penguin Random House
- Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality, Pantheon Books
2022 Winners
- Mia Bay, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, Harvard University Press
- Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello, Henry Holt & Co.
2021 Winners
- William A. Darity, Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-first Century, University of North Carolina Press
- Lawrence Goldstone, On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of American Voting Rights, Counterpoint Press
2020 Winners
- Jelani M. Favors, Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, University of North Carolina Press
- Brandon K. Winford, John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights, University Press of Kentucky
2019 Winners
- Rachel Devlin, A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools, Hachette Book Group
- Vanessa Siddle Walker, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools, The New Press
- Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, St. Martin's Press
2018 Winners
- James Forman Jr, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux
- Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, Viking/Penguin Books
2016-2017 Winners
Presented by Southern Regional Council, University of Georgia Libraries, DeKalb County Public Library/Georgia Center for the Book and Piedmont College
2017
- Bell-Scott, Patricia, The Firebrand and the First Lady, Alfred A. Knopf
- Goluboff, Risa, Vagrant Nation, Oxford University Press
2016
- Knott, Cheryl, Not Free, Not For All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow, University of Massachusetts Press
-
Morrison, Minion K. C., Aaron Henry of Mississippi: Inside Agitator, University of Arkansas Press
2007-2015 Winners
Presented by Southern Regional Council, University of Georgia Libraries, DeKalb County Public Library/Georgia Center for the Book
2015
- Formwalt, Lee W., Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Southwest Georgia Freedom Struggle, 1814-2014, Albany Civil Rights Institute and Georgia Humanities Council
- Maraniss, Andrew, Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South, Vanderbilt University Press
2014
- Lafayette, Bernard, Jr., In Peace and Freedom, My Journey in Selma, University Press of Kentucky
- O'Brien, M.J., We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth's Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired, University Press of Mississippi
2013
- Jelks, Randal Maurice, Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: a Biography, University of North Carolina Press
- Hamlin, Francoise N., Crossroads at Clarkdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II, University of North Carolina Press
2012
- Brown-Nagin, Tomiko, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Right Movement, Oxford University Press
- Inscoe, John C., Writing the South Through the Self: Explorations in Southern Autobiography, University of Georgia Press
2011
- Lerner, Steve, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States, The MIT Press
- McGuire, Danielle L., At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance-A New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Alfred A. Knopf
2010
- Wood, Amy Louise, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940, University of North Carolina Press
- Eagles, Charles W., The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss, University of North Carolina Press
2009
- Gross, Areila J., What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, Harvard University Press
- Bob Zellner with Constance Curry, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, NewSouth Books, Inc.
2008
- Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution, Princeton University Press
- Wesley C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America, University of North Carolina Press
2007
- Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard, Houghton Mifflin Co.
- Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics In the Sunbelt South, Princeton University Press
2004-2006 Winners
Presented by the Southern Regional Council and the University of Georgia Libraries
2006
- Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, University of North Carolina Press
- W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
2005
- Stepanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, University of North Carolina Press
- Frye Gaillard, Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America, University of Alabama Press
- Tayari Jones, The Untelling: A Novel, Time Warner Book Group
2004
- Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, University of North Carolina Press
- Elizabeth R. Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, Oxford University Press
- Frank X. Walker, Buffalo Dance, The Journey of York, The University Press of Kentucky
1968-2002 Winners
Presented by Southern Regional Council
2002
- Anthony Grooms, Bombingham , Free Press
- Mark Newman, Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995 , University of Alabama Press
- Keith Wailoo, Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health, University of North Carolina Press
- William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins , and Robert Korstad editors, with Paul Ortiz, Robert Parrish, Jennifer Ritterhouse, Keisha Roberts, Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South, The New Press
2001
- Hal Crowther, Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South, Louisiana State University Press
- Pam Durban, So Far Back, Picador USA
- Robert P. “Bob” Moses, Charles E. Cobb, Jr., Radical Equations , Beacon Press
- Natasha Trethewey, Domestic Work, Graywolf Press
2000
- Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, The Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, University of North Carolina Press
- Andrew M. Manis, A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth , University of Alabama Press
- Michael Keith Honey, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism and the Freedom Struggle, University of California Press
1999
- J. Morgan Kousser, Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction , University of North Carolina Press
- Leroy Davis, A Clashing of the Soul: John Hope and the Dilemma of African-American Leadership and Black Higher Education in the Early Twentieth Century , University of Georgia Press
1998
- John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement , with Michael D'Orso, Simon & Schuster
- Elizabeth Cox, Night Talk , Graywolf Press, 1997 (Paperback Edition, St. Martin's Press, 1998)
1997
- John M. Barry, The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, Simon & Schuster
- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain , Atlantic Monthly Press
1996
- Michael D'Orso, Like Judgment Day: The Ruin and Redemption of a Town Called Rosewood , Grosset/Putnam
- Constance Curry, Silver Rights , Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
- Anthony Grooms, Trouble No More , La Questa
1995
- Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, University of California Press
- Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisana, 1915-1972, University of Georgia Press
- Mary Lee Settle, Choices, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
1994
- John Gregory Brown , Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery , Houghton Mifflin Company
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Colored People , Alfred A. Knopf
- John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi , University of Illinois Press
1993
- Charles W. Eagles, Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama , University of North Carolina Press
- William Baldwin, The Hard To Catch Mercy , Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
- Margaret Rose Gladney, How Am I To Be Heard? Letters of Lillian Smith, University of North Carolina Press
1992
- Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours , Beacon Press
- Melissa Fay Greene, Praying for Sheetrock , Addison-Wesley
- Denise Giardina, The Unquiet Earth , W.W. Norton & Company
1991
- J.L. Chestnut, Jr., and Julia Cass, Black in Selma : The Uncommon Life of J.L. Chestnut, Jr., Politics and Power in a Small American Town , Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Mary Ward Brown, Tongues of Flame, E.P. Dutton
1990
- Wayne Flynt, Poor But Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites , University of Alabama Press
- Dori Sanders, Clover: A Novel , Algonquin Books
1989
- Melany Nielson, Even Mississippi, University of Alabama Press
- Madison Smartt Bell, Soldier's Joy , Ticknor & Fields
- Gloria Naylor, Mama Day , Ticknor & Fields
1988
- Melton A. McLaurin, Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South , University of Georgia Press
- C. Eric Lincoln, The Avenue: Clayton City , Morrow
1987
- Thomas L. Johnson, and Phillip C. Dunn (ed.), A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts, 1920-1936 , Algonquin Books
- Pauli Murray, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage , Harper & Row
- Mary Hood, And Venus is Blue: Stories , Ticknor & Fields
1986
- A.J. Mojtabai, Blessed Assurance: At Home with the Bomb in Amarillo , Texas , Houghton Mifflin
1985
- James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement , Arbor House
- Peter Taylor, The Old Forest and Other Stories , Dial Press
1984
- John Egerton, Generations: An American Family , University of Kentucky Press
- Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose , Harcourt Brace
- Eudora Welty, Special Lifetime Award
1983
- Fred Hobson, South-Watching: Selected Essays by Gerald W. Johnson, University of North Carolina>Press
- Roy Hoffman, Almost Family , Dial Press
1982
- Harry S. Ashmore, Hearts and Minds: The Anatomy of Racism from Roosevelt to Reagan , McGraw-Hill
- John Ehle, The Winter People , Harper & Row
1981
- John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley , University of Illinois Press
- Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline , Houghton Mifflin
1980
- Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching , Columbia University Press
- Cormac McCarthy, Suttree , Random House
1979
- Marion Wright and Arnold Shankman, Human Rights Odyssey , Moore Publishing
- Ernest J. Gaines, In My Father's House, Alfred A. Knopf
1978
- Will D. Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly , The Seabury Press
- Garrett Epps, The Shad Treatment: A Novel , Putnam
1977
- Alex Haley, Roots , Doubleday
- Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America 's Struggle for Equality, Alfred A. Knopf
1976
- James Loewen and Charles Sallis, Mississippi : Conflict and Change, Pantheon Books
- Reynolds Price, The Surface of Earth, Atheneum
1974
- C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow , Oxford University Press
- Albert Murray, Train Whistle Guitar, McGraw-Hill
1973
- Harold Martin, Ralph McGill, Reporter, Little Brown and Company
- Alice Walker, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems , Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
1972
- Robert Coles , Children of Crisis, Vol. II: Migrants Sharecroppers, and Mountaineers , and Vol. III: The South Goes North, Little Brown and Company
1971
- Anthony Dunbar, Our Land, Too, Pantheon Books
1970
- Paul M. Gaston, The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking , Alfred A. Knopf
1969
- Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, Louisiana State University Press
1968
- George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New South : 1913-1945, Louisiana State University Press