Washington, D.C. (May 8, 1997) - Worse Then Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky has won the 17th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Edwin O. Guthman, chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, announced today.

Drawing on prison records, state archives, legislative hearings, court proceedings, folklore and the blues, Oshinksy reconstructed the harrowing history of Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary in Mississippi. Worse Than Slavery (The Free Press) provides a stark and unflinching look at a tragic episode in the chronicle of race and justice in America. This impressive work of historical scholarship reminds once again that the abolition of slavery did not end the institutionalized oppression of African-Americans.

"Robert Kennedy championed timeless principles -- among them justice, dignity and equality," said Mr. Guthman. "David Oshinsky's work takes these principles to heart and exposes one of the harshest examples of their abuse -- Parchman Farm."

"The issues of justice, race and rehabilitation were very close to Robert Kennedy's heart," said Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. "In Worse Than Slavery, David Oshinsky carefully surveyed justice in Mississippi from the days of convict leasing and prison farms to the jailing of Freedom Riders in the 1960s. Conditions at Parchman have improved, but this fine work -- all the more powerful because of its cool objectivity -- recalls the legacy of racial injustice and brutality that still poisons our society."

David Oshinsky is Professor of History at Rutgers University. His project on the Parchman Penitentiary earned him a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a visiting appointment as Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Texas, Austin.

Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy will present the awards at a ceremony hosted by The Newseum on Thursday, May 8 1997 at 6:00 p.m.

In addition, John Kenneth Galbraith will be recognized with a special Lifetime Achievement Award from the Awards committee. "No person has done more to keep alive the humane, purposeful, joyous, and ironical spirit of American liberalism than John Kenneth Galbraith," said Schlesinger. "The man who held prices under control during the war, the distinguished ambassador to India, the cherished friend and counselor of John Kennedy, he has devoted his long years to finding ways to give the abused and insulted of the world a better break in life. We honor his realism in action, his elegance in style and the undaunted idealism of his hopes for humanity."

Ambassador Galbraith is a distinguished Harvard economist and author of 20 books, including American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power, Economics and the Public Purpose, The Anatomy of Power, and most recently, The Good Society: The Humane Agenda.

The Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was founded in 1980 by Mr. Schlesinger with proceeds donated from his best-selling biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times. Each year the Award honors the literary work that most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes -- his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity.

Past winners include Raymond Bonner, John Egerton, Vice President Al Gore, Melissa Fay Greene, Myles Horton, Jonathan Kozol, Toni Morrison, Roger Rosenblatt and Alec Wilkinson.

Judges for the 1997 RFK Book Awards were Gail Lumet Buckley, author of a biography of the Hornes, her family; Elizabeth Crook, a historical fiction writer from Texas; Charles U. Daly, executive director of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; and Peter S. Prescott, a noted book critic and former winner of this award. This panel selected the winners from a field of nearly 200 entries. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. serves as founder and chair of the committee and John Seigenthaler is the co-chair

The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, a non-profit organization for social justice and human rights, was founded in 1968 by friends and family as a living tribute to Robert Kennedy's vision of a better world.

The Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Awards ceremony is hosted by The Freedom Forum, a non-partisan international organization dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people. Its headquarters is The Freedom Forum World Center in Arlington, Virginia.