Jon Gjerde Prize

Jon Gjerde Prize Submission 2023 Form

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 (2022). 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. Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Gjerde earned his BA from the University of Northern Iowa and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He held the Morrison Professorship in American History and American Citizenship and then served as a dean at the University of California-Berkeley. His most important publications include The Minds of the West (1999), From Peasants to Farmers (1989), and Catholicism and the Shaping of Nineteenth-Century America, with S. Deborah Kang (2012). Preference will be given to books that go beyond state history to contribute to a larger knowledge of the region. Publishers are invited to submit books for consideration, and members of the MHA are invited to submit nominations.

The committee considered thirteen books nominated by their respective presses for the 2023 Jon Gjerde Prize Award. All reflect the authors’ considerable research and compositional effort. Most focused deeply on aspects of Midwestern history, bringing to our attention forgotten, neglected, or glossed over aspects that enrich our understanding. For example, Dawn’s Light Woman and Nicolas Franchomme: Marriage and Law in the Illinois Country, by Carl Ekberg and Sharon Person, in addition to providing a new perspective on colonial-era relationships between Indigenous and French peoples in southern Illinois, exemplifies the insights deep research can yield. The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms, by Megan Birk, examines the overlooked history of “poor farms” in the Midwest, welfare institutions that attempted to address rural poverty amid plenty and, often, social and mental health issues. Melissa Ford’s A Brick and a Bible: Black Women’s Radical Activism in the Midwest during the Great Depression chronicles their efforts to achieve economic and social justice in what they hoped would be the “promised land.” And in When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, that state forms both the case study and the nexus of the farm crisis of the 1980s, a depression that, unlike that of the 1930s, impacted only one sector of the economy.

Each of the nominated books adds to the tapestry of Midwestern history. But, according to the committee, one nominated book presents the tapestry itself and is the committee’s choice for the Gjerde Award. Jon Lauck’s The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900 surveys the first century of Midwestern history and argues that, while not perfect, the region deserves recognition for being “a land of democratic vigor, cultural strength, racial and gender progress, and civic energy.” (Lauck, 3) It is “a new look at midwestern history” and the first focused on just that time period, aiming to encapsulate all elements comprising the region’s history—personalities, politics, population, culture—in a simultaneously brief, focused, and comprehensive volume (Lauck, 3). The Good Country is concise and readable, accessible to the general reader upon whom we rely for building support for the role of history in schools. It also is deeply researched and heavily sourced to appeal to an academic audience seeking an overview of the region’s nineteenth century history. The Good Country can serve as a starting point for a reader’s first foray into Midwestern history or as a reminder for someone deep in the weeds of particular research topic that their work is part of a larger picture. It is an excellent addition to the canon.

Past Prize Recipient

2021 Recipient: Samantha Seeley, Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States (Omohundro Institute of Early American Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)

The 2022 Gjerde Book Award Committee (L. Bao Bui, Ann Vlock, Gregory Rose) has selected, from many excellent submissions, Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States by Samantha Seeley (Omohundro Institute of Early American Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2021) as this year’s winner. Through original research and a new perspective, Professor Seeley’s monograph changes how we look at movement and migration, characteristic features of American life. The migration of settlers into the Ohio Valley, including the southern and eastern Old Northwest, during early national period is a common topic. But what did the movement and migration of settlers into the region mean for Native Americans who sought and fought to remain in their traditional lands rather than be forced to move elsewhere within the region or out of it altogether so new settlers could be accommodated? And what did the movement and migration of settlers mean for free and enslaved African Americans? The latter were often blocked from entering the Northwest, and those who sought to remain in the region faced prejudice, maltreatment, or violence aimed at limiting their rights or removing them to other places. Seeley’s book explores the history of the battles—martial, legislative, and in the court of public opinion—for the right to remain or arrive. Similar battles were waged by national and state governments and opinion leaders to dispossess or block peoples not seen as representing the ideal migrant to new lands intended for white yeoman farmers. Seeley ably demonstrates that the policies and actions of Euro-Americans in the colonial and early national eras provided the foundation for the harsher and more well-known antebellum removals of 1830 and beyond. In fact, the antebellum removals involved so much devastation precisely because “removal was already woven into the fabric of the nation itself.” (Seeley, 23) Although the experiences of Native Americans differed from those of African Americans, both groups encountered hostile policies and responded to the unequal power relationships they faced with an array of common tactics that demonstrate their histories need to be viewed in relationship to each other, not as two parallel narratives. The newly forming states of what later became the Midwest were built from the top-down by political events and players and by the bottom up through the actions of ordinary people deciding to stay or to move. In the spirit of Professor Gjerde’s work, Professor Seeley brings a new perspective to our understanding of Midwestern history while integrating the histories of migration and movement into the histories of racism and colonization during America's 19th century nation-building project.

Photo by Cory Haala