Barbara Savage of Africana Studies Wins 2024 ASALH Book Prize

Barbara D. Savage, Geraldine R. Segal Professor Emerita of American Social Thought and Professor Emerita of Africana Studies, has won the 2024 Best Book Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Savage’s book Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar chronicles the life of Dr. Merze Tate (1905-1996), who taught in the fields of diplomatic history and international relations at Howard University from 1942 to 1977. The annual honor recognizes an outstanding book in the field of African American history and culture.
 
At Penn, Savage taught graduate and undergraduate courses on 20th-century African American history, American religious and social reform movements, media and politics, and Black women’s political and intellectual history. She served as the inaugural chair of the Department of Africana Studies and as Graduate and Undergraduate Chair.
 
Savage’s other books include Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948, which won the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Award, and Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion, winner of the prestigious 2012 Grawemeyer Prize in Religion. She received her doctorate in history from Yale in 1995.
 
For more on the ASALH Book Prize, click here.