Congratulations to the 2023 Anne Braden Prize Winner
The Southern Historical Association is delighted to announce the winner of the Anne Braden Prize: Kimberly Welch, “The Stability of Fortunes: A Free Black Woman, Her Legacy, and the Legal Archive in Antebellum New Orleans,” JOURNAL OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA 12 (December 2022): 473-502. This prize, which was first awarded in 2022, recognizes the best article on a topic in Southern women’s history. This year’s selection committee was composed of Professors Joan Cashin (chair), Brandi Brimmer, and Lori Glover.
The prize citation is as follows: Professor Welch tells a compelling story about Eulalie Mandeville, a free black woman who navigated through the white-controlled legal system in antebellum Louisiana to protect her rights. An inheritance dispute broke out in 1846, when Mandeville’s white partner, Eugene Macarty, died. She used a brilliant strategy, making savvy use of the documentary record, to fend off Macarty’s white relatives and safeguard her children’s future. She prevailed in court and was able to keep her assets. Professor Welch explored over three hundred and fifty pages of testimony, and she presents her argument in clear, graceful prose. Her well-crafted article casts new light on issues of gender, race, and the workings of the court system in the Old South.
Congratulations!
Hilary N. Green
Hilary N. Green is the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College. She previously worked in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama where she developed the Hallowed Grounds Project. She earned her M.A. in History from Tufts University in 2003, and Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010. Her research and teaching interests include the intersections of race, class, and gender in African American history, the American Civil War, Reconstruction, as well as Civil War memory, African American education, and the Black Atlantic. She is the author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (Fordham, 2016).
One Reply to “Congratulations to the 2023 Anne Braden Prize Winner”