William and Mary faculty member to win the
award while at the College. The Bancroft is one of the top
awards that many equate with the Pulitzer Prize. According to
the Bancroft jury, “This model work of local history
succeeds in illuminating both individual lives and large
structures, both limits and possibilities, and the result is a
complex and arresting story that will make us all think harder
about the history of race relations in the antebellum
South.” In addition, it has been named a Best Book of
2004 by the Washington Post Book World, as well as being
designated Editor’s Choice by the Atlantic Monthly.
Israel on the Appomattox tells
the compelling story of Richard Randolph’s determination to free his slaves. He does not live to see it, but they are freed little by little and settle on land given to them in Randolph’s will. The residents name it Israel Hill, perhaps as a nod to the biblical promised land. Considering the complicated racial history of Prince Edward County, this is a remarkable insight into race relations that were cooperative and civil. Freed blacks and whites even founded and built a church together, and where they worshiped together in antebellum South. He has won other prestigious awards and honors since the release of the book, so we salute the Library of Virginia for their choice of Melvin Patrick Ely as one of the nine finalists for this year’s awards.
the compelling story of Richard Randolph’s determination to free his slaves. He does not live to see it, but they are freed little by little and settle on land given to them in Randolph’s will. The residents name it Israel Hill, perhaps as a nod to the biblical promised land. Considering the complicated racial history of Prince Edward County, this is a remarkable insight into race relations that were cooperative and civil. Freed blacks and whites even founded and built a church together, and where they worshiped together in antebellum South. He has won other prestigious awards and honors since the release of the book, so we salute the Library of Virginia for their choice of Melvin Patrick Ely as one of the nine finalists for this year’s awards.
Other winners included, in the category of
fiction by a Virginia author: Carrie Brown, Confinement; Joe
Jackson, How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to
Better Things; Leslie Pietrzyk,
Award winning book, Israel on the Appomattox,
a Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1700s Through the
Civil War, by Melvin Patrick Ely is one of the finalists in the
Library of Virginia’s 8th Annual Library of Virginia
Literary Awards.
panel of judges from 110 books that were
nominated for the wards. There is a gala held in the
winners’ honor each October.
The finalists for the best nonfiction work
about Virginia or by an author who is a Virginian struck pay
dirt with Melvin Patrick Ely and his book (that we reviewed in
the March/April 2005 issue of the Virginia Review) Israel on
the Appomattox, A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the
1790s Through the Civil War. Ely, who is a Richmond native, is
a professor of History and Black Studies at the College of
William and Mary. He is also the author if The Adventures of
Amos ’n’ Andy: A Social History of an American
Phenomenon.
This past spring, he won the prestigious
Bancroft Prize in American History for Israel on the
Appomattox. He is the second College of
