* 2008 – Junot Diaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
* 2008 – Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist
* 2008 – William Melvin Kelley , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2007 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun
* 2007 – Taylor Branch for At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
* 2007 – Martha Collins for Blue Front: Poems
* 2007 – Scott Reynolds Nelson for Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend
* 2006 – Zadie Smith for On Beauty
* 2006 – Jill Lepore for New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
* 2006 – William Demby , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2005 – August Wilson , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2005 – Geoffrey C. Ward for Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
* 2005 – A. Van Jordan for MACNOLIA: Poems
* 2005 – Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker
* 2004 – Derek Walcott , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2004 – Adrian Nicole LeBlanc for Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
* 2004 – Edward P. Jones for The Known World
* 2004 – Ira Berlin for Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves
* 2003 – Reetika Vazirani for World Hotel
* 2003 – Samantha Power for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (P.S.)
* 2003 – Adrienne Kennedy , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2003 – Stephen L. Carter for The Emperor of Ocean Park
* 2002 – Jay Wright , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2002 – Colson Whitehead for John Henry Days
* 2002 – Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed for Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir
* 2002 – Quincy Jones for Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
* 2001 – F. X. Toole for Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner
* 2001 – David Levering Lewis for W. E. B. Du Bois, 1919-1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century
* 2001 – Lucille Clifton , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 2000 – Edward W. Said for Out of Place: A Memoir
* 2000 – Chang-Rae Lee for A Gesture Life: A Novel
* 2000 – Ernest Gaines , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 1999 – John Lewis, Michael D'orso for Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
* 1999 – John Hope Franklin , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 1999 – Russell Banks for Cloudsplitter: A Novel
* 1998 – Gordon Parks , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 1998 – Walter Mosley for Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
* 1998 – Toi Derricote for The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey
* 1997 – Albert L Murray , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 1997 – James McBride for The Color of Water 10th Anniversary Edition
* 1997 – Jamaica Kincaid for Autobiography of My Mother
* 1996 – Dorothy West , Lifetime Achievement Award
* 1996 – Madison Smartt Bell for All Souls' Rising
* 1996 – Jonathan Kozol for Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation
* 1995 – William H. Tucker for The Science and Politics of Racial Research
* 1995 – Brent Staples for Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White
* 1995 – Reginald Gibbons for Sweetbitter: A Novel (Voices of the South)
* 1994 – David Levering Lewis for W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader
* 1994 – Judith Ortiz Cofer for The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women
* 1993 – Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas for The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization
* 1993 – Sandra Cisneros for Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories
* 1993 – Kwame Anthony Appiah for In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
* 1992 – Marilyn Nelson Waniek for Homeplace
* 1992 – Elaine Mensh, Harry Mensh for The IQ Mythology: Class, Race, Gender, and Inequality
* 1992 – Peter Hayes for Lessons and Legacies I: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World (Lesson & Legacies) (v. 1)
* 1992 – Melissa Fay Greene for Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction
* 1992 – Ralph Ellison for Invisible Man, Special Achievement Award
* 1991 – Forrest G. Wood for The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century
* 1991 – Walter A. Jackson for Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987 (Fred W Morrison Series in Southern Studies)
* 1991 – Carol Beckwith, Angela Fisher, Graham Hancock for African Ark: People and Ancient Cultures of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa
* 1990 – Dolores Kendrick for Women of Plums: Poems in the Voice of Slave Women
* 1990 – Hugh Honour for The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume IV, Part 1 (Menil Foundation)
* 1989 – Peter Sutton for Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia
* 1989 – George Lipsitz for A Life In The Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition
* 1989 – Henry Louis Gates Jr. for Collected Black Women's Narratives (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers)
* 1989 – Taylor Branch for Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63
* 1988 – Abigail M. Thernstrom for Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Twentieth Century Fund Books/Reports/Studies)
* 1988 – Toni Morrison for Beloved
* 1988 – Walter F., Jr. Morris for Living Maya
* 1988 – Nadine Gordimer for Sport of Nature
* 1987 – Gail Sheehy for Spirit of Survival
* 1987 – Arnold Rampersad for The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902-1941)
* 1986 – Northland Editors for Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary
* 1986 – James North for Freedom Rising
* 1986 – Donald Alexander Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community and the First Amendment
* 1985 – David S. Wyman for The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945
* 1985 – Breyten Breytenbach for Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel
* 1984 – Humbert S. Nelli for From Immigrants to Ethnics: The Italian Americans
* 1984 – Jose Alcina Franch for Pre-Columbian Art
* 1983 – Wole Soyinka for Ake: The Years of Childhood
* 1983 – Richard Rodriguez for Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
* 1982 – Peter J. Powell for People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830-1879
* 1982 – Geoffrey G. Field for Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain
* 1981 – Jamake Highwater for Song from the Earth: American Indian Painting
* 1980 – Tepilit Ole Saitoti for Maasai
* 1980 – Richard Borshay Lee for The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society
* 1980 – Urie Bronfenbrenner for The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design
* 1979 – Phillip V. Tobias for The Bushmen: San Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa
* 1978 – Maxine Hong Kingston for The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
* 1978 – Allan Chase for LEGACY OF MALTHUS (Illini Books)
* 1977 – Michi Weglyn for Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps
* 1977 – Richard Kluger for Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
* 1977 – Jamaica Kincaid for The Autobiography of My Mother
* 1976 – Raphael Patai for The Myth Of The Jewish Race: A Biologist's Point Of View
* 1976 – Thomas Kiernan for The Arabs: Their history, aims, and challenge to the industrialized world
* 1976 – Lucy S. Dawidowicz for The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945
* 1975 – Leon Poliakov for The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe
* 1975 – Eugene D. Genovese for Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
* 1974 – Louis Leo Snyder for The Dreyfus case: A documentary history
* 1974 – Albie Sachs for Justice in South Africa (Perspectives on Southern Africa)
* 1974 – Michel Fabre for The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright
* 1974 – Charles Duguid for Doctor and the Aborigines
* 1973 – Lee Rainwater for Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Family Life in a Federal Slum
* 1973 – Betty Fladeland for Men and Brothers
* 1973 – Pat Conroy for The Water is Wide
* 1972 – Donald L Robinson for Slavery in the structure of American politics, 1765-1820
* 1972 – Naboth Mokgatle for The Autobiography of an Unknown South African
* 1972 – David Loye for The healing of a nation
* 1972 – John S. Haller for Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859 - 1900
* 1972 – George M. Fredrickson for The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914
* 1971 – Anthony Wallace for Death and Rebirth of Seneca
* 1971 – Stan Steiner for La Raza: The Mexican Americans
* 1971 – Carleton Mabee for Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War
* 1971 – Robert William July for A History of the African People
* 1970 – Audrie Girdner for The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans during World War II
* 1970 – Florestan Fernandes for The Negro in Brazilian Society
* 1970 – Vine Deloria for Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
* 1970 – Dan T. Carter for Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South
* 1969 – Stuart Levine, Nancy O. Lurie for The American Indian Today
* 1969 – Leonard Dinnerstein for The Leo Frank Case
* 1969 – Gwendolyn Brooks for In the Mecca; Poems
* 1969 – E. Earl Baughman, W. Grant Dahlstrom for Negro and White Children: A Psychological Study in the Rural South
* 1968 – Erich Kahler for The Jews among the Nations
* 1968 – Raul Hilberg for The Destruction of the European Jews
* 1968 – Robert Coles for Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear
* 1968 – Norman Rufus Colin Cohn for Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
* 1967 – Oscar Lewis for La Vida
* 1967 – David Brion Davis for The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
* 1966 – Amram Scheinfeld for Your Heredity and Environment
* 1966 – Claude Brown for Manchild in the Promised Land
* 1966 – Baldry for Unity Mankind Greek Thought
* 1966 – Alex Haley for The Autobiography of Malcolm X
* 1965 – James W. Silver for Mississippi: The Closed Society
* 1965 – Abram L. Sachar for A History of the Jews, Revised Edition
* 1965 – James M. McPherson for The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction
* 1965 – Milton M. Gordon for Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins
* 1964 – Bernard E. Olson for Faith and Prejudice
* 1964 – Harold R. Isaacs for The New World of Negro Americans
* 1964 – Nathan Glazer, Daniel P. Moynihan for Beyond the Melting Pot, Second Edition: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City
* 1963 – Theodosius Dobzhansky for Mankind Evolving
* 1962 – John Howard Griffin for Black Like Me
* 1962 – Dwight L. Dumond for Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America
* 1962 – Gina Allen for The Forbidden Man
* 1961 – Louis B. Lomax for The Reluctant African
* 1961 – E. R. Braithwaite for To Sir with Love
* 1960 – John Haynes Holmes for I Speak for Myself
* 1960 – Basil Davidson for Lost Cities of Africa
* 1959 – George Eaton Simpson, J. Milton Yinger for Racial and Cultural Minorities:: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination
* 1959 – Martin Luther King Jr. for Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
* 1958 – South African Institute of Race Relations for Handbook on Race Relations
* 1958 – Jessie B. Sams for White Mother
* 1957 – Father Trevor Huddleston for Naught for Your Comfort
* 1957 – Gilberto Freyre for The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization
* 1956 – George W. Shepherd for They Wait in Darkness
* 1956 – John P. Dean, Alex Rosen for Manual of Intergroup Relations
* 1955 – Lyle Saunders for Cultural Differences and Medical Care
* 1955 – Oden for Meeker
* 1954 – Langston Hughes for Simple Takes a Wife
* 1954 – Vernon Barlett for Struggle for Africa
* 1953 – Han Suyin for Many Splendoured Thing
* 1953 – Farley Mowat for People of the Deer
* 1952 – Laurens Van Der Post for Venture to the Interior
* 1952 – Brewton Berry for Race Relations
* 1951 – John Hersey for The Wall
* 1951 – Henry Gibbs for Twilight in South Africa
* 1950 – Shirley Graham for Your Most Humble Servant
* 1950 – S. Andhil Fineberg for Punishment Without Crime
* 1949 – Alan Paton for Cry, the Beloved Country
* 1949 – J.C.Furnas for Anatomy of Paradise
* 1948 – Worth Tuttle Hedden for The Other Room
* 1948 – Kenneth R., Philp for John Collier's Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954
* 1947 – Pauline R. Kibbe for Latin Americans in Texas
* 1947 – Sholem Asch for Prophet
* 1946 – Wallace Stegner for One Nation
* 1946 – St. Clair Drake for Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
* 1945 – Kenneth B. Clark for Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power
* 1945 – Gwethalyn Graham for Earth and High Heaven
* 1944 – Ronald Takaki for A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
* 1944 – Maurice Samuel for The World of Sholom Aleichem
* 1944 – Roi Ottley for New World A-Coming
* 1943 – Zora Neale Hurston for Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
* 1942 – James G Leyburn for The Haitian People
* 1942 – Leopold Infeld for Quest: An Autobiography
* 1941 – Louis Adamic for From Many Lands
* 1940 – Edward Franklin Frazier for The Negro Family in the United States (The African American Intellectual Heritage Series)
* 1937 – Julian Huxley for WE EUROPEANS: A SURVEY OF 'RACIAL' PROBLEMS.
* 1936 – Harold Foote Gosnell for Negro Politicians (The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago)