The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library are thrilled to announce the winner of this year’s Ruth Ratner Miller Award for Excellence in American History: Concord resident Jacqueline Jones.

Join the Friends in this very special FREE program on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. at the library.

Born in Delaware, Dr. Jones received a B.A. in 1970 from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has held academic positions at Wellesley College, Brown University, and Brandeis University, among other institutions. She is Professor Emerita, Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History, and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin. “I’m deeply honored to be the recipient of this year’s Miller Award and to join such an eminent group of past winners,” said Jones.” I hope we can all take inspiration from Ruth Ratner Miller’s belief that an understanding of history — no matter how difficult the issues it forces us to confront— is a civic duty that we as Americans share with one another.”

As an American social historian, Jones has authored several books, including most recently, No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era (2023), winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History,  and Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons (2017). She is also the author of A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America (2013). That book and Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize; Labor of Love won the Bancroft Prize for 1986. Jones was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship as well as fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies.

Other works include Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War, 1854-1872 (2008); Creek Walking: Growing Up in Delaware in the 1950s (2001); A Social History of the Laboring Classes from Colonial Times to the Present (1999);  American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (1998); The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present (1993); and Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 (1992).

About the Miller Award:

Established in 1998, the Miller Award is given each year in memory of Ruth Ratner Miller by her four children to honor the life of their mother, Ruth, who believed passionately that understanding history was not merely desirable but a civic and religious duty. Previous recipients of the award include Annette Gordon-Reed, Nathaniel Philbrick, David Hackett Fischer, Jill Lepore, Heather Cox Richardson, and Sean Wilentz, among other esteemed historians.

For more information on the Concord Festival of Authors, please visit www.concordfestivalofauthors.org.