Washington, D.C. (May 11, 1998) - Race, Crime, and the Law (Pantheon Books) by Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy has won the Grand Prize for the 18th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Through Race, Crime, and the Law, Randall Kennedy not only uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, but he engages in the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. Kennedy also analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair; examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another and probes allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments.

"Race, Crime, and the Law is an original, wise and courageous work that moves beyond sterile arguments and lifts the discussion of race and justice to a new and more hopeful level," said Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Randall Kennedy received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his law degree from Yale Law School. A Rhodes Scholar, he served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and lives in Dedham, Mass. Race, Crime, and the Law is Kennedy's first book.

In addition, The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (Allen Lane/Penguin) by Samuel Hynes will receive the First Place Award. The Soldiers' Tale focuses on the two World Wars and Vietnam, and on the accounts written by victims of war ñ survivors of prisoner-of-war camps, the Nazi Death camps, and the atom bomb. Hynes draws from accounts recorded under fire and from memories that look back over decades, by unknown authors whose battle memoirs are their only published work and literary memoirists like Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Elie Wiesel and Tim O'Brien.

"This acute meditation on war and its human meaning wonderfully illuminates the darkest tests people face in this, the most terrible of centuries," said Schlesinger.

Samuel Hynes was a Marine pilot from 1943 to 1946 and from 1952 to 1953, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He has taught at Swarthmore College, Northwestern University, and most recently at Princeton University, where he is a Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus.

Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy will present the awards at a ceremony held at The Freedom Forum on Wednesday, May 13, 1998 at 12:00 p.m. Randall Kennedy will receive a bust of Robert F. Kennedy and a cash award of $2,500. Samuel Hynes will receive a bust of Robert F. Kennedy.

Schlesinger founded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1980 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 1998 RFK Book Awards were Alan Brinkley, an award winning author and American history professor at Columbia University; John W. Douglas, former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (1963-1966); Kaye Gibbons, an award-winning fiction writer; and Anthony Lewis, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a syndicated columnist for The New York Times. This panel selected the winners from a field of nearly 200 entries. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. is the 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. The headquarters are The Freedom Forum World Center in Arlington, Virginia.