JAMES F. SULZBY AWARD
The Alabama Historical Association sponsors the James F. Sulzby Award to honor the founding president and longtime secretary of the Association. The prize recognizes excellence in a book published in the previous two years that has made the most significant contribution to greater knowledge and appreciation of Alabama history.​ The award will be presented at the 78th annual meeting in Fairhope, Alabama on Friday, April 10, 2026.
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The 2026 Award Committee will consider books published from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2025.
If your press has a book (or books) that you’d like to nominate for the Sulzby Award, please send three copies to the following address:
Dr. Michael Robinson
University of Mobile
5735 College Parkway
Mobile, AL 36613
Please send submissions as soon as possible and no later than January 10, 2026. For questions, email Dr. Robinson at alabamareview@umobile.edu.
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List of Sulzby Award winners:
2024
Morales, R. Isabela. Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom. Oxford University Press, 2022.
2022
Huff, Mary Elizabeth Johnson and Carole Ann King. Alabama Quilts: Wilderness through World War II, 1682 – 1950. University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
2019
Ashmore, Susan Youngblood and Lisa Lindquist-Dorr. Alabama Women: Their Lives and Times. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017.
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2017
Haveman, Christopher D. Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016.
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2015
​Downs, Matthew L. Transforming the South: Federal Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1915-1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014.
2013
Maxwell, Jerry H. The Perfect Lion: The Life and Death of Confederate Artillerist John Pelham. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011.
2011
Reverby, Susan M. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
2009
Diouf, Sylviane A. Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America. New York: The Oxford University Press, 2007.
2005
Flynt, Wayne. Alabama in the Twentieth Century.Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
2003
Thornton, J. Mills. Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.
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Fitzgerald, Michael W. Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890. Baton Rouge: Lousiana University Press, 2003.
2001
Manis, Andrew. A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.
1999
Dupre, Daniel S. Transforming the Cotton Frontier: Madison County, Alabama, 1800-1840. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
1997
Carter, Dan T. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
1995
Rogers, William Warren; Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, Wayne Flynt. Alabama, The History of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994.
1993
Thomas, Mary Martha. The New Woman in Alabama: Social Reforms and Suffrage, 1890-1920. University of Alabama Press, 1992.
1991
Flynt, Wayne. Poor But Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.
1989
Hamilton, Virginia Van der Veer. Lister Hill: Statesman from the South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
1987
Sims, George E. The Little Man's Big Friend: James E. Folsom in Alabama Politics, 1946-1958. University of Alabama Press, 1985.
1985
Ellison, Rhoda. Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years. University of Alabama Press.
1983
Johnson, Evans C. Oscar W. Underwood: A Political Biography. LSU Press, 1980.
1981
Mathis, Ray. John Horry Dent: South Carolina Aristocrat on the Alabama Frontier. University of Alabama Press, 1979.
1979
Thornton, J. Mills, III. Politics and Power in a Slave Society. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.
