Pulitzer Prize Highlights Racial Inequality

Pulitzer prizes were awarded to writers who focused on topics ranging from colonial slavery, to the 20th century of Black life.

Playwright Lynn Nottage (seen above) who wrote 'Ruined', a tale of survival set during an African civil war; she won a prize for drama.

The Pulitzer for general non-fiction went to 'Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II' by Douglas A. Blackmon, an Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.  
  
Blackmon stated of his Pulitzer, "It’s a huge honor for me,
but more importantly I hope it really validates the idea that this is a part of American history that we have ignored and neglected, and it’s time for a really dramatic reinterpretation of what happened to African-Americans during that period of time,” the Associated Press reported.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, won the biography prize for 'American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House'; a best-selling book about a populist president whose sympathy for the less fortunate never extended to slaves (book seen above-r).  

“Jackson represents the best and the worst of us,” Meacham stated according to the Associated Press.

2009 LA