History professor Steven Reich wins NEH Fellowship
News
SUMMARY: Steven Reich, professor of history, was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his project and will spend the one-year fellowship period writing a book that expands on his project “Buzzards Over Texas: A Story of Race, Violence and the Search for Justice in the Jim Crow South.”
Steven Reich, professor of history, was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his project, “Buzzards Over Texas: A Story of Race, Violence and the Search for Justice in the Jim Crow South.” Reich will spend the one-year fellowship period writing a book that reconstructs the history and fate of the people of Sandy Beulah, a settlement of Black landowners in east-central Texas that was destroyed by mob violence in the summer of 1910.
Drawing on newly discovered evidence, including a 350-page trial transcript, and interviews that he conducted with descendants of survivors of the massacre, Reich’s book “recounts the dramatic story of the prosperous Black farmers of Sandy Beulah, the community that they built over 30 years, the massacre that wiped it out in less than 48 hours, and the legal battle to bring the killers to justice.” Through this work, Reich seeks to share “a more African American-centered history of racial violence that captures the full humanity of victims and survivors.”
NEH fellowships are highly competitive awards that support advanced research by scholars “pursuing projects that embody exceptional research, rigorous analysis, and clear writing.” In this funding cycle, NEH awarded 82 fellowships, funding just eight percent of the fellowship proposals that it received. Reich also garnered a NEH summer stipend in 2023 to support travel to Texas to carry out archival research and interviews for this project.
Discussing the value of the fellowship, Reich reflected that the “discipline of the application process itself forced me to sharpen my thinking and to define my project and its significance with much greater clarity.” He also noted that the fellowship will “provide the time, free of distraction, to focus on completing the manuscript.”
Reich will spend the fellowship period writing and revising his book manuscript, which is under contract with W.W. Norton & Company. His book has an anticipated publication date of 2025.
