Generations of Captivity

Ira Berlin (1941-2018) was a prominent American historian who published work on the history of slavery, freedom, African American communities, and the Atlantic world. He worked as a professor of history at the University of Maryland and served as the president of the Organization of American Historians in 2002 and 2003.

Many prestigious societies recognized Berlin’s work. The Society for the History of the Federal Government twice awarded its Thomas Jefferson Prize to the multi-volume Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, which Berlin edited. The American Historical Association (AHA) bestowed its J. Franklin Jameson Prize for outstanding editorial achievement on the work as well. That publication was one of many produced by the Freedman and Southern Society Project, which Berlin founded in 1976 and directed until 1991. According to the AHA, this project “analyzed, annotated and published thousands of primary documents that profoundly reshaped interpretations of African American history during the Civil War and early Reconstruction.”

Berlin published his best-known works of historical synthesis in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America chronicled the development of slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries. It won the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass prize, two prestigious awards granted by top American institutions of higher education.