2001: "Without Sanctuary", by James Allen; and "Blood of the Liberals", by George Packer

21st Annual RFK Book Award

Judges: Adam Clayton Powell III, Amanda Smith, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Seigenthaler, Sr., and Sean Wilentz.

Grand Prize Winners:
Without Sanctuary: A History of Lynching Photography in America, James Allen

Blood of the Liberals, George Packer

21st Annual RFK Book Award Honors Books on the History of Lynching Photography

Mrs. Robert Kennedy to present awards at May 2 ceremony at Freedom Forum in Arlington, VA

(April 11, 2001 - Washington, D.C.) - A gripping study of lynching in the U.S. and a thoughtful examination of the shifting meaning of liberalism in the twentieth century share top honors as winners of the 21st annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Grand Prize winners James Allen, author of Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, and George Packer, author of Blood of the Liberals will receive their awards at a May 2nd ceremony at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, VA.

Twin Palm Publisher's release, Without Sanctuary: A History of Lynching Photography in America, records the documented lynching of 3,436 African Americans between 1882 and 1950. While this figure represents a small percentage of the total number of the seldomly reported murders, the crisis of lynching during the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to the creation of the NAACP in 1909. These images are some of the most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back upon the carnage and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget. A family saga and the history of a political idea blend in this thoughtful, gracefully written reflection. Journalist and novelist Packer traces three generations of his own family and the shifting meaning of liberalism over the past century. "The story of each generation of my family," Packer writes, "is in a way the story of an inherited idea crashing up against the hard rock of new circumstance." Both a critique of liberalism and an affirmation of it, Blood of the Liberals gives a poiltical voice to a new generation that has grown up without the certainties of earlier ones.