“If you don’t know what happened behind you, you’ve no idea of what is happening around you."
-James Baldwin (1961)
This year’s recipient of the Wilbur H. Siebert Award is David Blight, PhD, Class of 1954 Professor of History and the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. The award, which is named in honor of Siebert, a 19th and 20th century professor at Ohio University, for his pioneering work in researching and preserving the history of the Underground Railroad, recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to this field of knowledge.
Dr. Blight, a scholar of slavery, race, and the Civil War, is a native of Flint, Michigan, where he taught for several years as a public high school teacher. He received his undergraduate degree at Michigan State University and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has also been the recipient of many honorary doctorates.
In 2003, Blight joined the faculty at Yale University, where he has been recognized for his teaching and mentorship. In 2017, he received the Graduate Mentor Award for the Humanities and in 2018 he received an award “for his commitment to ensuring excellence and equity in graduate education."
Blight is the author/editor of numerous articles and books including Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory (Smithsonian, 2004). He also authored the prize winning A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation (Harcourt, 2007), which examined two largely unknown slave narratives. Blight uses the words of these formerly enslaved men to argue in contrast to traditional scholarship of the Underground Railroad that African Americans were largely agents of their own liberation.
At the center of many of Blight’s work has been freedom seeker Frederick Douglass, who he became interested in the early 1980s, and is now considered one of the leading Douglass scholars. His most recent book is Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2018).
Blight is passionate about bringing historical knowledge to wider audiences. In 2004, Blight became the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center, which coincidentally is also celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The center through collaborative relationships works to increase the public’s understanding of the history of slavery and resistance. As director, in addition to organizing various conferences, working groups and lectures, and administering the center’s annual Frederick Douglass Book price, he also is involved in outreach programs directed at high school educators, museum curators and staff, and the general public. He has been involved in several documentary films, including Africans in America (PBS, 1998). Blight has also worked with museums and historical societies, including serving on the board of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.
Tags: ugrr underground railroad network to freedom ntf ntf members network to freedom members 20th anniversary wilbur h. siebert
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
