NEWS RELEASE

 

 

GARDNER GARNERS ADAMS PRIZE FOR

 HARRY TRUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS

 

The Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG) recently announced Michael R. Gardner’s Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks as the winner of the 2003 Henry Adams Book Prize, according to Dr. Keir B. Sterling, SHFG Book Prize Committee Chair. Gardner will receive the award at the SHFG’s annual meeting, March 14–15, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

 

The Society for History in the Federal Government, a non-profit professional organization founded in 1979, awards six prizes each year for the various types of historical publication. The Society’s purpose is to promote study and broad understanding of the history of United States government and to serve as the voice of the federal historic community.

 

The Henry Adams Prize is awarded by the Society annually for a major publication on the federal government’s history. Entries are judged for value in furthering the understanding and history of the federal government, quality and thoroughness of research, style and appropriateness of presentation, suitability and rigor of methodology, and use of original and primary materials.

 

The prize commemorates Henry Adams, author of the classic multi-volume History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Adams conducted his writing and research in Washington DC, where he maintained close contact with the successors of the federal officials whose activities he documented in History of the United States.

 

Harry Truman and Civil Rights recounts Truman’s public and private actions regarding black Americans. By analyzing speeches, private conversations with colleagues, the executive orders that shattered federal segregation policies, and the appointments of like-minded civil rights activists to important positions, Gardner traces Truman’s evolution from a man who grew up in a racist household into a president willing to put his political career at mortal risk by actively working to transform the ideal of equal rights for all Americans into a reality. Harry Truman and Civil Rights (320 pages, 28 illus., $35 cloth, 9 Feb. 2002) includes forewords from George M. Elsey, administrative assistant to President Truman, and Kweisi Mfume, NAACP President and CEO. The volume is a selection of the History Book Club.

 

Michael R. Gardner is a communications policy attorney in Washington, D.C. He also serves as the pro bono chairman of the United States Telecommunications Training Institute, a non-profit international training initiative he founded in 1982 while serving as the U.S. ambassador to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. A graduate of the College at Georgetown University and of the Georgetown University Law School, Gardner has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and has also served on four presidential commissions under Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush senior.

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