Joseph L. Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore’s History
Joseph L. Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore’s History in 2024
Joseph L. Arnold, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, died in 2004, at the age of sixty-six. He was a vital and enormously important member of the UMBC faculty for some three and a half decades as well as a leading historian of urban and planning history. He also played an active, and often leading role with a variety of private and public historical institutions in the Baltimore area, and at his death was hailed as the "dean of Baltimore historians."
Thanks to the generosity of the Byrnes Family, in memory of Joseph R. and Anne S. Byrnes, the BCHS presents an annual Joseph L. Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore's History, in the amount of $500.
New Submission Deadline: April 14, 2025
Entries should be unpublished manuscripts between 15 and 45 double-spaced pages in length (including footnotes/endnotes).
To submit an entry, address an e-mail message to: ArnoldPrizeBCHS@gmail.com.
* attach the entry as a single document in either MS Word or PC convertible format.
* include any illustrations within the text of the document.
There will be a “blind judging” of entries by a panel of historians. Criteria for selection are: significance, originality, quality of research and clarity of presentation.
The 2024 winner will be announced in Spring 2025. The BCHS reserves the right to not to award the prize.
The winning entry will be posted to the BCHS webpage and considered for publication in the Maryland Historical Magazine. Also, the winner may be invited to be a presenter during a future BCHS Baltimore History Evening.
Historians, graduate students, independent researchers, authors: All are welcome to apply. The winner does not have to reside in Baltimore. For further information send a message to Dr. Ida Jones at ArnoldPrizeBCHS@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at 443-885-4294.
2023 Award
The winner of the 2023 Joseph Arnold Prize is Paul Besse for the essay, “Grasping for Air: Baltimore's Aviation Ambitions and Glenn L. Martin, 1925-1941.”
2022 Award
The winners of the 2022 Joseph Arnold Prize are Sydney Van Morgan, Edward C. Papenfuse, Stan Becker, and Samuel B. Hopkins for the essay “A Maryland Mystery: Johns Hopkins, the 1850 Census, and Slavery.”
2021 Award
The winner of the 2021 Joseph Arnold Prize is Daphne Tang for the essay “The Legacies of Baltimore’s Holy Week Uprising in 1968 on the Demonstrations in 2015 Against Police Brutality.”
2020 Award
The winner of the 2020 Joseph Arnold Prize is Richard Bell, Ph.D. for the essay “Border State, Border War: Fighting for Freedom and Slavery in Antebellum Maryland.”
2019 Award
The winner of the 2019 Joseph Arnold Prize is John Tilghman, Ph.D. for the essay "‘The Show of Strength Such Has Seldom Seen:’ Blockbusting and the Black Electoral Politics in 1950s Baltimore’s West Side."
2018 Award
The winner of the 2018 Joseph Arnold Prize is Anne Louise Hollmuller for the essay Judged by the Generations: Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments and the Shaping of Historical Memory.
2017 Award
The winner of the 2017 Joseph Arnold Prize is Amy Rosenkrans for the essay "The 'Good Work': The Franciscan Sisters of Saint Mary, Mill Hill and the African American Mission in Baltimore."
2016 Award
The winner of the 2016 Joseph Arnold Prize is Barry Kessler for the essay entitled “Fresh Air and Cheer”: The Origins of Camp Louise in the Settlement House Movement of Baltimore’s Jewish Community.
2015 Award
The winner of the 2015 Joseph Arnold Prize is Aiden Faust for the essay entitled, “Neighborhood Matters: What Baltimore Learned from the War on Poverty.”
The prize was announced at the Baltimore City Historical Society’s Annual Meeting on Saturday June 18, 2016 held at the Druid Hill YMCA.
2014 Award
Entries for 2014 were judged by a review panel of six scholars of Baltimore history. Dr. Ed Orser, UMBC, chaired the review panel.
The panelists found two of the entries to be of exceptional strength and decided that the conferral of co-winners was merited.
The winners are:
Deborah Weiner, Insiders and Outsiders: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Baltimore During the Interwar Era
Dennis Halpin, 'For My Race Against All Political Parties': Building a Radical African-American Activist Foundation in Baltimore, 1870s-1885
Reviewers were impressed that both papers made excellent use of primary documents, developed original arguments, and contributed to an understanding of important aspects of Baltimore history.
Of Insiders and Outsiders, one reviewer wrote:
“[‘Insiders and Outsiders’] accurately describes a world in which, for example, a Jew could be Maryland’s speaker ofthe house while Baltimore’s mayor welcomes a Nazi ship to his city. Even as anti-Semitism reached its peak, Jews were more engaged than ever in Baltimore’s civic and cultural life. While this dichotomy reflected national trends, circumstances peculiar to Baltimore gave the position of Jews its own distinct character.”
A review of For My Race Against All Political Parties commented:
“For Black Baltimoreans [the late 1870s and early 1880s] represented a crucial period when a new set of community activists slowly emerged to challenge not only racist white policies, but also established leaders who had seized the mantel of uplift with the fall of slavery. . . . Men like Harvey Johnson, Joseph S. Briscoe, H. J. Brown, and P. H. A. Braxton pushed Baltimore’s Black community in new directions.”
The prizes for 2014 will be presented at the Baltimore City Historical Society’s Annual Meeting 10:00 am Saturday June 20, 2015 Robert E. Lee Park, Pavilion 2 1000 Lakeside Drive, Baltimore MD 21210. All are welcome.
2013 Award
The award of the Joseph L. Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore History in 2013 was grantedto Charlotte F. Gerczak for her paper entitled The Courage of her Convictions: the Story of Miriam Brailey.
The paper tells the forgotten story of Miriam Esther Brailey, M.D., Dr.P.H., an exceptional woman born with the twentieth century who graduated from both The Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and of [then] Hygiene and Public Health. She went on to serve the citizens of Baltimore City and both the public and private sectors and to meet life's challenges with determination and faith, even at the risk of her own security.
2012 Award
Eric L. Goldstein, Associate Professor of History at Emory University won the 2012 contest with his essay, How German Were ‘German’ Jews in America in the Nineteenth Century? A View from Baltimore, and was ranked highest by a panel of five distinguished scholars of Baltimore history. The winning paper can be found here.
2011 Award
Winner of the 2011 contest was Sara Patenaude, PH.D. candidate in the History Department of Georgia State University, for her paper, Playing Fair: The Fight for Interracial Athletics in Baltimore. The Society thanks all those who submitted entries, as well as the following judges, who helped to select the winners: Dr. John Beihan, Loyola University of Maryland; Dr. Elizabeth M. Nix, University of Baltimore; and Dr. Michael Franch, Past-president, Baltimore City Historical Society. Thanks, too, to Dr. W. Edward Orser, UMBC, who administered the 2011 competition. To view the winning paper, click here.
2010 Award
Co-winners of the 2010 contest were Eric M. Daniel, for his paper, Northwest Real Estate Company v. Serio: The "Invasion" of a Northwest Baltimore Suburb, and Jordan Vardon, for his paper, Green v. Garrett: How the Economic Boom of Professional Sports Helped to Create, and Destroy, Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. The Society thanks all those who submitted entries, as well as the following judges, who helped to select the winners: Dr. Jean H. Baker, Goucher College; Dr. Peter B. Levy, York College; Dr. W. Edward Orser, UMBC; and Dr. Kaye Whitehead, Loyola College. To view the winning entries, click here and here.
