Jon Gjerde Prize
The Jon Gjerde Prize is given annually by the Midwestern History Association to the author(s) of the best book in Midwestern history published during the previous calendar year. The prize is named for the late historian of immigration and ethnicity, who made significant contributions to the historical understanding of American history, especially the history of the people of the Midwest.
The Gjerde Prize Committee received an unprecedented number of nominations this year. Each text highlighted specific figures or events central to Midwestern history, illuminated the formation of regional culture, and connected regional events to broader national narratives.
Among all of the exemplary nominees, Ashley Howard’s Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellion and the Black Freedom Movement, published by UNC Press, stood apart. By focusing much needed attention on a violent period within the histories of three important Midwestern cities - Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; Milwaukee, Wisconsin - and deftly demonstrating how each illustrates the complexity of mid-century African American resistance, Howard makes a clear argument for the region's importance and centrality to the national narrative. Extensive use of municipal archives, published documents, and oral histories underpins the text’s engaging prose and clear, persuasive, argumentation. Ultimately, Howard’s Midwest Unrest epitomizes the crucial contribution historians of the Midwest continue to make to contemporary historical inquiry.
The committee also wishes to recognize additional texts as Honorable Mentions for this year’s prize.
Willa Hammitt Brown’s Gentleman of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack, published by the University of Minnesota Press, offered a beautifully written and thoughtfully organized reconsideration of lumberjacks and Northwoods communities. The text tugged the field of Midwestern history in a new direction by defining the region culturally, ecologically, and geographically while employing the analytical lens of regional history along with labor history and gender studies.
Kendra D. Boyd’s Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, juxtaposes aspiration with illegality, activism with violence, and deepens historians' understanding of the multilayered economic impacts of the Great Migration.
John Craig Hammond’s The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, demonstrates familiar historical periods still benefit from fresh analytical approaches. The text’s effective consideration of expansive subject matter is facilitated by a focus on regional events, which illustrate the consistent importance of place and identity.
Past Recipients
2024 - Erik S. McDuffie, The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-second-battle-for-africa
Honorable Mention - Sergio González's, Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging & Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087943
2023 - R. Douglas Hurt, Agriculture in the Midwest, 1815-1900 https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496233493/agriculture-in-the-midwest-18151900/
2022 - Jon Lauck, The Good Country https://www.oupress.com/9780806190648/the-good-country/
2021 - Samantha Seeley, Race, Removal and the Right to Remain https://uncpress.org/book/9781469664811/race-removal-and-the-right-to-remain/
2020 - Joseph Stanhope Cialdella Motor City Green https://upittpress.org/books/9780822945727/
2019 - Lauren Kroitz Cultivating Citizens: The Regional Work of Art in the New Deal Era https://www.ucpress.edu/books/cultivating-citizens/hardcover#awards
2018 - Christopher Phillips, The Rivers Ran Backwards, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rivers-ran-backward-9780195187236?cc=us&lang=en&
2017 - Andrew Diamond, Chicago on the Make https://www.ucpress.edu/books/chicago-on-the-make/paper#awards
2016 - Jason Weems, Barnstorming the Prairies https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816677511/barnstorming-the-prairies/
2015 - Brenda Child, My Grandfather's Knocking Sticks, https://shop.mnhs.org/products/my-grandfathers-knocking-sticks
Photo by Cory Haala