Black History Month: Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author

Photo Credit:  Jerry Bauer

Creator spotlight to acknowledge and celebrate black history makers

“Love has been many things throughout history: the simple comfort of the familiar, having a person to know and being known by that person in return; a connection born of shared experiences, an irrational joy in another’s presence; a particular calming influence that one member of the couple may exert on the other, or that they both provide to one another. A combination of all these and myriad other things can go into making one person wish to stay tied to another. Anyone who is not in the couple–that is, everyone else in the world–will not understand precisely how or why it works for two people.” – Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello:  An American Family

American historian and law professor, Annette Gordon-Reed, was the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize for History in 2009 for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello:  An american Family.  She also won 15 other prizes for the work she’s done during that year.  In 2010, she received the National Humanities Medal and was named a MacArthur Fellow.  Gordan-Reed was educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.  She is a Professor of Law and History at Harvard, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Raddiffe Institute for Advanced Study.