Ira Berlin (May 27, 1941 – June 5, 2018^[1]) was an Americanhistorian, professor of history at theUniversity of Maryland, and former president ofOrganization of American Historians.

Ira Berlin
Berlin in 2008
Born	May 27, 1941
Died	June 5, 2018
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Academic work
Institutions	University of Maryland
Doctoral students	Jessica Marie Johnson

Berlin wrote the booksMany Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998) andGenerations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (2003).

Berlin grew up inBronx, New York, and received hisPh.D. from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He wrote extensively onAmerican history and the largerAtlantic world in the 18th and 19th centuries. Berlin focused in particular on the history ofslavery in the United States. His first book,Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974), was awarded the Best First Book Prize by the National Historical Society.^[2]

Berlin's work is concerned with what he termed the "striking diversity" in African-American life under slavery. He argues that this diversity is especially evident with attention to the differences in African-American life under slavery across geography and time.^[3] In his 1998 bookMany Thousands Gone, which covers the history of North American slavery through the 18th century, Berlin differentiates among four regions and their respective forms of slavery: the Chesapeake, theLowcountry of South Carolina andGeorgia, theLower Mississippi Valley, and the North. He further differentiates each of these regions across three distinct "generations," emphasizing shifts over time. Berlin argues that geographic and temporal differences in the first two centuries of North American slavery had important consequences for African American culture and society.

He founded theFreedmen and Southern Society Project and served as director until 1991. The project's multi-volumeFreedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation has twice been awarded the Thomas Jefferson Prize of the Society for the History of the Federal Government, as well as the J. Franklin Jameson Prize of theAmerican Historical Association for outstanding editorial achievement (October, 1999). He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.^[4]

In 2003, Berlin was the chief advisor for theHBO documentaryUnchained Memories. In 2007, he was an advising scholar for the award-winningPBS documentaryPrince Among Slaves, produced byUnity Productions Foundation.

• Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974)ISBN 978-1-59558-173-0 Tells the story of the free black men and women who lived in the South before the Civil War.
• Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 (1982) Selections from the holdings of the National Archives; series one, volume three,The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South, edited by Ira Berlin,Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland and Julie Saville.
• The Black Military Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1985)ISBN 978-0-521-22984-5 Collection of first-hand accounts from the National Archives.
• Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, edited by Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman (University of Illinois Press, 1986) Essays.
• Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas, edited by Ira Berlin andPhilip D. Morgan (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies,University Press of Virginia, 1993)ISBN 978-0-8139-1424-4 Essays.
• Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era, edited by Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland (New Press, 1996)ISBN 978-1-56584-026-3
• Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard University Press, 1998)ISBN 978-0-67400-211-1 1999Bancroft Prize fromColumbia University; 1999 Elliott Rudwick Prize of theOrganization of American Historians; 1999 Frederick Douglass Prize for the Best Book on Slavery; 1998Association of American Publishers Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award in the category of History; 1998Los Angeles Times Book Prize; finalist for the 1998National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction; co-recipient of the 1999Southern Historical Association Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award.
• Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves (Harvard University Press, 2003) 2003Albert J. Beveridge Award of theAmerican Historical Association;Anisfeld-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction.
• The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations (Viking, 2010)
• The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2015)^[5]

• Appearances onC-SPAN