David W. Blight
David W. Blight at the 2019 National Book Festival
Born	David William Blight (1949-03-21)March 21, 1949 (age 76) Flint, Michigan, U.S.
Spouse	Karin Beckett ​ (m. 1987)​
Awards	Frederick Douglass Prize (2001) Bancroft Prize (2002, 2019) Lincoln Prize (2002, 2019) Pulitzer Prize (2019)
Academic background
Education	Michigan State University (BA,MA) University of Wisconsin, Madison (PhD)
Thesis	Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1985)
Academic work
Discipline	American studies History
Sub-discipline	American history
Institutions	North Central College Harvard University Amherst College Yale University
Notable works	Race and Reunion (2001) Frederick Douglass (2018)
Website	davidwblight.com

David William Blight (born 1949) is theSterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of theGilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition atYale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History atAmherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including theBancroft Prize andFrederick Douglass Prize forRace and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and thePulitzer Prize andLincoln Prize forFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. In 2021, he was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.^[1]

Blight was born on March 21, 1949, inFlint, Michigan, where he grew up in amobile home park. He attendedFlint Central High School, from which he graduated in 1967.^[2]

He then attendedMichigan State University where he played for theMichigan State Spartans baseball team and graduated in 1971 with aBachelor of Arts in history. Blight taught atFlint Northern High School for seven years. He received hisMaster of Arts degree inAmerican history from Michigan State in 1976 and aDoctor of Philosophy degree in the same field from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985 with a dissertation titledKeeping Faith in Jubilee: Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of the Civil War.^[3]

Following stints atNorth Central College (1982–1987) andHarvard University (1987–1989), Blight taught atAmherst College from 1990 to 2003. In 2001, he publishedRace and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. It "presented a new way of understanding the nation's collective response to the war, arguing that, in the interest of reunification, the country ignored the racist underpinnings of the war, leaving a legacy of racial conflict."^[4] The book earned Blight both theBancroft Prize andFrederick Douglass Prize.

After being hired by Yale in 2003 and teaching as a full professor, in 2006 Blight was selected to direct the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. His primary focus is on theAmerican Civil War and how American society grappled with the war in its aftermath. His 2007 bookA Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation provides context for newly discovered first-person accounts by two African-American slaves who escaped during the Civil War and emancipated themselves.^[5]

He also lectures forOne Day University. In Spring 2008, Blight recorded a 27-lecture course,The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845–1877 forOpen Yale Courses, which is available online.

Blight wroteFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, released in 2018, as the first major biography of Douglass in nearly three decades. One reviewer called it "the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass" and another heralded the book as "the new Frederick Douglass standard-bearer for years to come."^[6][7] It earned the 2019Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2019 Gilder LehrmanLincoln Prize.^[8]

Contributing to the anthologyOur American Story (2019), Blight addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. He cited Frederick Douglass's 1867 speech titled "Composite Nation" calling for a "multi-ethnic, multi-racial 'nation' ... incorporated into this new vision of a 'composite' nationality,separating church and state, giving allegiance to a single new constitution, federalizing theBill of Rights, and spreading liberty more broadly than any civilization had ever attempted". Blight concluded that although the search for a new unified American story would be difficult, "we must try".^[9]

In July 2020, Blight was one of the 153 signers of the "Harper's Letter", published inHarper's Magazine and titled "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", which expressed concern that "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted."^[10]

In 2020, David Blight was commissioned by the then president of Yale CollegePeter Salovey to form a research group on "the history of Yale and slavery." In 2024, Blight publishedYale and Slavery: A History, in which he found that "A multitude of Yale University's founders, rectors and early presidents, faculty, donors, and graduates played roles in sustaining slavery, its ideological underpinnings, and its power".^[11]

• 2001Frederick Douglass Prize forRace and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.^[12]
• 2002Bancroft Prize; co-winner,James A. Rawley Prize from theOrganization of American Historians; 2002Ellis W. Hawley Prize, Organization of American Historians;Merle Curti Award; andLincoln Prize forRace and Reunion^[12]
• 2008 Connecticut Book Prize forA Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation
• 2012Anisfield-Wolf Prize forAmerican Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era^[13]
• 2018 Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Teaching Fellow, honor bestowed by theGeorgia Historical Society.
• 2018 The Lincoln Forum'sRichard Nelson Current Award of Achievement^[14]
• 2019 Gilder LehrmanLincoln Prize forFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
• 2019 New England Book Awards forFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom^[15]
• 2019Pulitzer Prize for History forFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
• 2019PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award forFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
• 2020American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in History^[16]
• 2022American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award^[17]

• David W. Blight (1989).Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. LSU Press.ISBN 978-0-8071-1724-8.
• David W. Blight (2001).Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Harvard University Press.ISBN 978-0-674-00819-9.
• David W. Blight (2002).Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War. University of Massachusetts Press.ISBN 978-1-55849-361-2.
• David W. Blight (2007).A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.ISBN 978-0-15-101232-9.
• David W. Blight (2011).American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era. Belknap Press.ISBN 978-0-67-404855-3.
• David W. Blight (2018).Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster.ISBN 978-1-4165-9031-6.
• David W. Blight (2024).Yale and Slavery: A History. Yale University Press.ISBN 9780300273847.

• Frederick Douglass (1993).Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Introduction David W. Blight. Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press.
• "They Knew What Time It Was: African-Americans and the Coming of the Civil War".Gabor Boritt, ed. (1996).Why the Civil War Came. Oxford University Press.ISBN 0-19-507941-8.
• "The Theft of Lincoln in Scholarship, Politics, and Public Memory".Eric Foner, ed. (2008).Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World. W. W. Norton & Company.ISBN 978-0-393-06756-9.
• Blight, David W., ed.When This Cruel War Is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2009.
• "Cup of Wrath and Fire".Ted Widmer, ed. (2016).The New York Times DISUNION: A History of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 10-13.
• "Hating and Loving the 'Real' Abe Lincolns: Lincoln and the American South" (2011).Richard Carwardine and Jay Sexton, eds.,The Global Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press.
• "Introduction" (co-authored withGregory P. Downs and Jim Downs). David W. Blight and Jim Downs, eds. (2017).Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation. University of Georgia Press. 2017.ISBN 9780820351483.
• "Composite Nation?",Joshua Claybourn, ed. (2019).Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative. Potomac Books.ISBN 978-1640121706.
• "Foreword: From Every Point of the Compass out of the Countless Graves".Brian Matthew Jordan; Jonathan W. White, eds. (2023).Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves. The University of Georgia Press.ISBN 9780820364551.

• Official website
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Chat Transcript (14 November 2007)."Historian David Blight on two newly published slave narratives".Court TV. Archived fromthe original on 23 November 2007. Retrieved5 December 2007.
• Yale History Faculty: David W. Blight
• "Historian David Blight to Direct the Gilder-Lehrman Center at Yale", Yale, 6 April 2009
• The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, Yale University
• Online Videos: David W. Blight,The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845–1877Archived 2012-10-05 at theWayback Machine,Open Yale Courses, 27 lectures, recorded Spring 2008, Yale University. Available free of charge via iTunes U.

• 1949 births
• Living people
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• Writers from Flint, Michigan
• University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
• Amherst College faculty
• Flint Central High School alumni
• Historians of the American Civil War
• Lincoln Prize winners
• Yale University faculty
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Historians of slavery
• Yale Sterling Professors
• Bancroft Prize winners
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Historians from Michigan
• American male non-fiction writers

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