Ira Berlin
Ira Berlin was a prominent American historian, born in New York City in 1941, who specialized in the history of Southern and African American life, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin in 1970 and went on to teach at several institutions, including the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. Berlin was celebrated for his groundbreaking works that provided insights into the perspectives of enslaved individuals, notably through his influential book *Slaves Without Masters: Free Negroes in the Antebellum South*, which received the Best First Book Prize from the National Historic Society.
Throughout his career, he published numerous acclaimed texts, including *Freedom's Soldiers: The Black Military Experience* and *Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves*, both of which garnered prestigious awards. In addition to his written contributions, he played a significant role in the production of the HBO documentary *Unchained Memories*, highlighting the experiences of former slaves. Berlin's academic and public service achievements earned him several fellowships and awards, including the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal and the American Historical Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction. He passed away on June 5, 2018, after a battle with multiple myeloma, leaving a lasting legacy in the field of American history.
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Ira Berlin
- Born: May 27, 1941
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: June 5, 2018
- Place of death: Washington, D.C.
Biography
A native of New York City born in 1941, Ira Berlin attended public schools before his acceptance into the University of Wisconsin. He earned his doctorate in history in 1970. He went on to teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago, at the Federal City College, and at the University of Maryland, earning distinction as a history professor.
Berlin published many works that focus on historical Southern and African American life, often giving rare slave perspectives derived from actual accounts from the people who traditionally did not write history. Specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, particularly the Civil War period, Berlin published his first book on the subject, Slaves Without Masters: Free Negroes in the Antebellum South, in 1975. This book won the Best First Book Prize from the National Historic Society.
Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War, a book that Berlin edited with others, won the Abraham Lincoln Award. Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience was awarded the American Historical Association’s J. Franklin Jameson Prize. Other accolades for Berlin include the Frederick Douglass Prize for Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. His 2003 work Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in the nonfiction category. That same year, he branched out into the world of television when, due to his expertise on the subject of slavery, he served as an advisor for the HBO documentary Unchained Memories, about former slaves. He published his last work, The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States, in 2015.
Berlin was named a Ford Foundation fellow as well as a humanist fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1971. He was also a member of the International Sociological Association, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association. Heparticipated in Columbia University Economic Seminars. In 2000, he was a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Humanities, and in 2004 he was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ten years later, Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African American Research awarded him the W. E. B. Dubois Medal and in 2015, he received the American Historical Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction. Also that year, after Berlin's encouragement, the University of Maryland created a memorial for Frederick Douglass. He married Martha Chait in 1963 and had two children, Lisa and Richard.
After a battle with multiple myeloma, Berlin died at a hospital in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2018, at the age of seventy-seven.
Bibliography
Baptist, Edward E. Review of The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States, by Ira Berlin. The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/books/review/the-long-emancipation-by-ira-berlin.html. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.
Blight, David W. "Ira Berlin, 1941–2018." The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University, 11 June 2018, glc.yale.edu/news/ira-berlin-1941-2018. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.
Genzlinger, Neil. "Ira Berlin Is Dead at 77; Groundbreaking Historian of Slavery." The New York Times, 8 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/obituaries/ira-berlin-groundbreaking-historian-of-slavery-dies-at-77.html. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.
"Ira Berlin, Influential Historian of Slavery, Dies at 77." Department of History, University of Maryland, history.umd.edu/news/ira-berlin-influential-historian-slavery-dies-77. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.
Smith, Harrison. "Ira Berlin, Transformative Historian of Slavery in America, Dies at 77." The Washington Post, 6 June 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/ira-berlin-transformative-historian-of-slavery-in-america-dies-at-77/2018/06/06/eddb33fc-6994-11e8-bf8c-f9ed2e672adf‗story.html. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.