Monday, August 21, 2006

Writer: Philip Lee Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu
Contact: Claudio Saunt, 706/542-2518, csaunt@uga.edu

University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt to receive prize for best book on Southwestern America in October ceremonies at Southern Methodist University

Athens, Ga. – Claudio Saunt, an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia, has been named winner of the 2006 William P. Clements Book Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America.

Saunt’s award-winning book is Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. He will receive the award, present a lecture and sign books in ceremonies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Tex., on Oct. 24.
           
"I'm especially pleased that this award considers not just history books but all non-fiction,” said Saunt. “In Black, White, and Indian, I worked hard to reach a broader audience, to expand the readership beyond a limited number of historians. It is really satisfying that a jury of both academics and non-academics found the book worthy of notice.”

According to the reviewing service Booklist, “Saunt examines the complicated history of race in America through five generations of a Native American family, the Graysons, whose long-denied descendants include African slaves. From 1780 to 1920, Saunt traces the Graysons and their interaction and intermixing with whites and blacks. At the center of this family saga is Katy Grayson, a Creek woman, who, along with her brother, had children with partners of African descent.

“Katy later married a Scottish-Creek man, disowned her black children and became a slave owner. Her brother, William, stayed with his black wife and children, later emancipating them. In 1907, when Creeks were granted U.S. citizenship, state law split the family by defining some as black and some as white. The divergent paths of these families parallel the interactions among whites, blacks and Indians as racial and social differences solidified through slavery and the mistreatment of Indians. This is a fascinating look at a seldom-recognized aspect of American race relations.”

The Clements Book Prize, which comes with an award of $2,500, honors fine writing and original research on the American Southwest.

Saunt teaches and writes about Native and early American history. Originally from San Francisco, he studied at Columbia University (B.A.'89), worked in Italy for a year and then attended Duke University (Ph.D. '96). His first book, A New Order of Things: Property, Power and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), traces the emergence of deep divisions between the wealthy and poor, powerful and powerless, in Creek communities in the Southeast. 

His article, “`The English has now a Mind to make Slaves of them all’: Creeks, Seminoles, and the Problem of Slavery," which was published in the American Indian Quarterly  in 1998, won the 1999 Bolton-Kinnaird Award for the best journal article on Spanish borderlands history.

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