B.L.C. Wailes Award (now part of the Lifetime Achievement Award)
2017 Robert S. McElvaine
2014 William Ferris
2012 Dan Jordan
2007 Winthrop Jordan
2006 Neil McMillen
2005 William K. Scarborough
2004 John F. Marszalek
1999 Edwin C. Bearss
1998 D. Clayton James
1997 Thomas McCraw
1996 Louis Harlan
1994 David Donald
1992 Shelby Foote
1990 Thomas D. Clark
Lifetime Achievement Award (formerly Dunbar Rowland Award)
2024 Charles Reagan Wilson
2023 Leslie-Burl McLemore
2022 Ellie J. Dahmer
2021 Alferdteen Harrison
2020 Kenneth P'Pool
2019 Jim Barnett
2018 Lucy Allen
2017 Elbert R. Hilliard
2016 Charles Gray
2015 Rosemary Taylor Williams
2014 Barbara Carpenter
2013 Kenneth G. McCarty, Jr.
2012 Ron and Mimi Miller
2011 John D.W. Guice
2010 Charles Sullivan
2006 Michael Ballard
2005 Charles Sallis
2003 Samuel O. McGahey
2002 Martha Swain
2001 Gordon Cotton
2000 Glover Moore
1998 John Ray Skates
1997 David Sansing
1996 William F. Winter
1995 Grace McKittrick Surget McNeil
1994 Patti Carr Black
1993 Charlotte Capers
1992 John K. Bettersworth
1991 James P. Coleman
1990 M. James Stevens
Book of the Year Award (formerly McLemore Prize)
2024 Grace Elizabeth Hale, In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning
2023 Evan Howard Ashford, Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915
2022 Christian Pinnen, Complexion of Empire in Natchez: Race and Slavery in the Mississippi Borderlands
2021 Nancy Bristow, Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College
2020 Dave Tell, Remembering Emmett Till
2019 Stephanie R. Rolph, Resisting Equality: The Citizens' Council, 1954-1989
2018 Charles W. Eagles, Civil Rights, Culture Wars: The Fight over a Mississippi Textbook
2017 Jason Morgan Ward, Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century
2016 Justin Behrend, Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War
2015 Aram Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear
2014 Charles C. Bolton, William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography
2013 Timothy Smith, Corinth 1862: Siege, Battle, Occupation
2011 Robert V. Haynes, The Mississippi Territory and the Southwest Frontier, 1795-1817
2010 Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss
2009 Christopher Myers Asch, The Senator and the Sharecropper: the Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer
2008 Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution
2007 Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2006
2006 Emilye Crosby, A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi
2005 Alan Huffman, Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today
2004 Nan E. Woodruff, American Congo, The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta
2003 Greg O'Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750-1830
2002 Yasuhiro Katagiri, The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission--Civil Rights and States' Rights
2001 John C. Willis, Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta After the Civil War
2000 Lawrence J. Nelson, King Cotton's Advocate: Oscar G. Johnston and the New Deal
1999 Christopher Waldrep, Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-1880
1998 John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
1997 Patricia Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700
1996 Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom
1995 John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
1993 James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity
1992 Susan Snell, Phil Stone of Oxford: A Vicarious Life
1991 Frank R. Parker, Black Votes Count: Political Empowerment in Mississippi After 1965
1990 Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow
1989 John Hebron Moore, The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest
1986 Robert May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader
1985 Patricia Galloway. Mississippi Provincial Archives, French Dominion Vols. IV and V
1984 Michael Wayne, The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880
1982 Janet Sharpe Herman, The Pursuit of a Dream
Journal of Mississippi History Best Article Prize (formerly Willie D. Halsell Prize)
2024 William R. Sutton, The Friars Point Coup and Aftermath: Historical Memory and Personal Character in the Era of Redemption
2023 Jere Nash, The Mississippi Legislature Changes the Flag
2022 Stuart Levin, Beeson Academy/Hattiesburg Prep: A History in Context
2021 Robert Luckett, James P. Coleman (1956-1960) and Mississippi Poppycock
2020 Jack D. Elliott, Jr. and Sidney W. Bondurant, Death on a Summer Night: Faulkner at Byhalia from The Journal of Mississippi History
2019 Charles Dollar, Florence Latimer Mars: A Courageous Voice Against Racial Injustice in Neshoba County, Mississippi (1923-2006)
2018 Crystal R. Sanders, Dignity in Life and Death: Undertaker Clarie Collins Harvey and Black Women’s Entrepreneurial Activism
2017 Terrence J. Winschel, A Soldier's Legacy: William T. Rigby and the Establishment of Vicksburg National Military Park
2015 Michael Vinson Williams, With Determination and Fortitude We Come to Vote: Black Organization and Resistance to Voter Suppression in Mississippi
2012 Paul T. Murray, Father Nathaniel and the Greenwood Movement
2010 Timothy J. Minchin and John A. Salmond, The Saddest Story of the Whole Movement: The Clyde Kennard Case and the Search for Racial Reconciliation in Mississippi
2009 Charles Bolton, William F. Winter and the Politics of Racial Moderation in Mississippi
2008 Jack D. Elliott, Jr., Paving the Trace
2007 Robert L. Fleegler, Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism, 1938-47
2006 Mark Newman, The Catholic Church in Mississippi and Desegregation, 1963-1973
2005 Jack D. Elliott, The Buried City: A Meditation on History and Place
2004 Thomas Upchurch, Why Populism Failed in Mississippi
2004 Jerry Dallas, Sectional Contrasts and the Demise of Old South Jackson's White Residential Areas
2003 Mary Jo Festle, First Try at a Second Chance: The Pioneering Lung Transplant
2002 Tom Ward, Medical Missionaries of the Delta: Dr. Dorothy Ferebee and the Mississippi Health Project, 1935-1941
2001 Cita Cook, The Modern Elitism of Young Ladies at Early Twentieth-century Stanton College
2000 Charles Weeks
1999 Leonard Schlup
1998 Jack D. Elliott, Jr.
1997 Mark M. Hull
1996 James Taylor Carson
1995 Kate Greene
1994 Herschel Gower
1993 William K. Scarborough
1992 Robert Hamblin
1991 Jack D. Elliott, Jr.
1990 Randy Sparks
1989 Robert May
1988 Christopher Johnson
1987 Daniel Vogt and Cecil Ross
1986 Chester "Bo" Morgan
1985 Lucie Bridgforth
1984 John C. Van Horne
1983 John H. Moore
1982 Carolyn Ellis, Joanne V. Hawks and J. Byron Morris
1981 David J. Ginzi
1980 Merrill R. Pritchett and William L. Shea
1979 Robert E. Snyder
1978 James L. McCorkle, Jr.
1977 Martha Swain
Best Thesis Prize (formerly Glover Moore Prize)
2023 Kara Goldman, Queer in the Queer's South's South: Women Desiring Women
2020 Kaimara Herron, She Lived, and Served, and Died: Caroline Barr, Black Domestic Workers, and the Threat of Memory in Lafayette County
2018 Lisa Foster, "Mississippi, Alone, Can They Look for Assistance": Confederate Welfare in Mississippi
2016 Ruth Poe White, A Tale of Two Cities: Vicksburg and Natchez, Mississippi During the American Civil War
2014 Bruce Janet, "Nineteenth Century Natchez, Mississippi in Photographs: Two Perspectives"
2009 Mona K. Vance, “Fighting the Wave of Change: Cultural Transformation and Coeducation at Mississippi University for Women”
2008 William Sturkey, "Houses of Liberty: The Impact of Freedom Schools During SNCC's 1964 Freedom Summer"
2007 Carter Dalton Lyon, "Sanctuaries of White Supremacy: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign, 1963-1964, Part I"
2006 Gary Coleman Cheek, Jr., "Cultural Flexibility: Assimilation, Education, and the Evolution of Choctaw Identity in the Age of Transformation, 1800-1830"
2005 Sara Elizabeth Morris, "Good Equipment Makes A Good Homemaker Better: Promoters of Domestic Technology in Mississippi 1930-1940"
2004 Susan Thorsten Falck, "The Garden Club Women of Natchez: To Preserve the South We Love"
2003 Fred Smith, "Agrarian Experimentation and Failure in Depression Mississippi: New Deal and Socialism, The Tupelo Homesteads and the Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms"
2001 Rebecca M. Dresser, "The Minor Family of Natchez: A Case of Southern Unionism"
2000 Albert Glover Way
1999 Kristy Armstrong
1998 Davis Douglass Buchanan, Jr.
1997 Laura Lynn McKnight
1996 Clayton P. Williams
1992 Todd Herring
1990 Michael B. Connolly
Best Dissertation Prize (formerly Franklin L. Riley Prize)
2023 Marc Aidinoff, A More Updated Union: A History of New Liberals and Their New Computers in the New New South
2020 Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, "Fightin' Johnnies, Fevers, and Mosquitos": A Medical History of the Vicksburg Campaign
2018 Katrina Rochelle Sims,"Take the Mountain" The International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor and the Black Health Care Initiative in the Mississippi Delta, 1938-1983
2016 Telisha Dionne Bailey, "Please Don’t Forget about Me:" African American Women, Mississippi, and the History of Crime and Punishment in Parchman Prison, 1890–1980
2014 Wendy D. Smith, "Perfect Harmony": the Myth of Tupelo’s Industrial Tranquility, 1937-1941
2012 Patricia Buzard Boyett, Race and Justice in Mississippi’s Central Piney Woods, 1940-2010
2008 Christopher Alan Danielson, The Voting Rights Act and the Creation of Black Politics in Mississippi, 1965-1986
2006 Francoise N. Hamlin, The Book Hasn't Closed, the Story Isn't Finished: Continuing Histories of the Civil Rights Movement
2004 Buck T. Foster, Dress Rehearsal for Hard War: William T. Sherman and the Meridian Expedition
2002 Todd Herring, Natchez, 1795-1830: Life and Death on the Slavery Frontier
2000 John Kelly Damico
1998 James Taylor Carson
1996 Emilye Crosby
1994 Bradley G. Bond
1990 Eric Clark
1988 Samuel Wells
1984 Melvin Philip Lucas
1984 Chester "Bo" Morgan
Excellence in History Award (formerly Elbert R. Hilliard Oral History Award)
2024 Behind the Big House Project and The Hill Country Project
2023 The Defenders: How Lawyers Protected the Movement documentary by Roderick Red
2022 Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project
2020 1969 Delta State College Black Student Sit-Ins Oral History Project
2019 Mark LaFrancis - Mississippi World War II Veterans Oral History Project
2016 Mississippi State University Libraries
2015 Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Inc.
2014 Mississippi State University
2012 Avery Rollins
2010 April Grayson and Kate Medley
2008 Northeast Mississippi Women's History Project
2007 Southern Foodways Alliance
2006 Southern Foodways Alliance
Excellence in History Award (formerly William Edward “Bill” Atkinson Mississippi Civil War History Award)
2019 Ben Wynne
2018 Michael Ballard (posthumously)
2017 H. Grady Howell
2015 Jane Sullivan
History Teacher of the Year Award (formerly John K. Bettersworth Award)
2024 Caitlin Thomas, Lafayette Middle School
2023 Alexandria Drake, JPS-Tougaloo Early College High School
2022 Steven R. White, Pearl High School
2021 Theresa Moore, Sacred Heart School, Hattiesburg
2020 Kevin J. Allemand, Jr, Hancock High School
2019 Bruce Mize, West Point High School
2018 Jennifer Leigh Johnson, Puckett High School
2017 Cathy Lee, Petal Middle School
2016 Lamenda Hase, Ocean Springs High School
2014 Ty Adair, Starkville High School
2013 John Mistilis, Oxford High School
2012 Chuck Yarborough, Mississippi School for Math and Science
2011 Timothy Gardener, Southaven High School
2010 Julie K. Heintz, Mississippi School for Math and Science
2009 Ruth Baker, Tupelo Middle School
2008 Tom Watts, Madison Middle School
2007 Marty Friend, Starkville High School
2006 Marlo Hendrix, Tupelo High School
2005 Todd Boucher, Biloxi High School
2004 Shelia Hooker Thorne, Tishomingo County High School
2003 Kelli Bowles, Hattiesburg High School
2002 Bonnie Feig, Starkville High School
2001 Christi D. Carter, Caledonia High School
2000 Silas L. Thompson
1999 Susie Bounds, Lamar County High School
1998 Lisa Landrum, South Jones High School
1997 Johnny R. Cox, Grenada High School
1996 Ola Mae Dana, Long Beach High School
1995 Brenda G. Smith, Oxford High School
1994 Sandra Mozingo, Horn Lake High School
Outstanding Local Historical Society Award (formerly Frank E. Everett, Jr. Award)
2024 Benton County Historical and Genealogical Society and Ashland Benton County Historical Preservation Commission
2023 The Historic Ocean Springs Association
2022 Dancing Rabbit Genealogy and Historical Society
2021 Woodville Civic Club
2020 Natchez Historical Society
2019 Yalobusha County Historical Society
2018 Itawamba Historical Society
2017 Historical Society of Gulfport
2016 Bolivar County Historical Society
2014 Chickasaw County Historical and Genealogical Society
2013 Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society
2012 Covington County Genealogical and Historical Society
2011 Yazoo Historical Society
2010 Hancock Historical Society
2009 Brandon Historical and Genealogical Society
2008 Tishomingo County Historical and Genealogical Society
2007 Newton County Historical Society
2006 Union County Historical Society and Heritage Museum
2005 Oxford-Lafayette County Heritage Foundation
2004 Historic DeSoto Foundation
2003 Marion County Historical Society
2002 Hattiesburg Area Historical Society
2001 Long Beach Historical Society
2000 Northeast Mississippi Genealogical and Historical Society
1999 Tate County Genealogical and Historical Society
1998 Noxubee County Historical Society
Mississippi History NOW Website Award
2018 Alison Collis Greene, The Great Depression and Religion in Mississippi
2017 Lisa C. Foster and Susannah J. Ural, Jefferson Davis Soldier Home-Beauvoir
2016 James C. Giesen, The Truth About the Boll Weevil
2012 Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey: a Woman of Uncommon Mind
2011 Jennifer Baughn, Rosenwald Schools in Mississippi
2010 Thomas N. Boschert, The Political Career of John Sharp Williams
2009 Stephen Creswell, Nuclear Blasts in Mississippi
2008 J. Michael Bunn and Clay Williams, A Failed Enterprise: The French Colonial Period in Mississippi
2007 Jason Phillips, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1865-1876
2006 Neil McMillen, WPA Slave Narratives