Over the President's Week, Ms. Madden and Mr. Sandler took 17 students to Trinity Church to attend the 26th annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize ceremony, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The prize is awarded each year by a distinguished jury of leading historians and journalists after a rigorous review of the year’s most significant works on slavery, resistance, and abolition.
This year’s winning author, a historian from the University of Virginia, presented her book Savings and Trust, a powerful study of Reconstruction-era racial capitalism focused on the Freedman’s Savings Bank, once located near Cedar Street in lower Manhattan. The book explores how approximately 70,000 African Americans deposited their savings in the bank after the Civil War, only to lose their money through corruption and mismanagement. In her remarks and Q&A, she drew striking parallels between the bank’s collapse and the predatory lending practices that disproportionately steered minority borrowers into subprime mortgages during the 2008 financial crisis.
Students also had the opportunity to meet Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Blight and New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, whose work our AP U.S. History students recently analyzed in class. Experiences like this allow students to see history as a living, evolving conversation.
A special highlight of the evening was reconnecting with Stuyvesant alumna Kimberly Williams (Class of 2003), who Mr. Sandler taught in AP U.S. History. A Harvard graduate who majored in history, she now serves as Director of Manhattan Regional and Community Affairs at Con Edison. It was inspiring for our students to see how a deep engagement with history can lead to impactful leadership in public service and civic life.
