Michael Honey's
'Going Down Jericho Road'wins RFK Book Award
The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial is pleased to announce the selection of acclaimed labor historian Michael Honey’s Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign as the first-prize winner of the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Going Down Jericho Road was chosen from five finalists including John Bowe’s Nobodies, Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine, Jonathan Cohn’s Sick, and Susan Eaton’s Children in Room E4.
The Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Awards Ceremony will be held on Tuesday, May 27th at 6:30 PM at the Newseum in Washington, DC. At the event, Mrs. Robert Kennedy will present the award to Michael Honey.
RFK Book Award Chair John Seigenthaler, Sr. convened this year’s distinguished panel of judges at the John Seigenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University: Nan Richardson, founder of Umbrage Editions and co-founder of SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, James Neal, former lead prosecutor of Jimmy Hoffa and the Watergate scandal, Justice A.A. Birch, former Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court and champion against the death penalty, and Mark Dalhouse, political scientist and the Director of Vanderbilt’s Office of Active Citizenship and Service.
Each year, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial presents the Book Award to the author whose work reflects Robert Kennedy’s concern for the oppressed; his commitment to justice, democracy and human rights; and his belief in the power of individuals to affect social change. Past winners of the RFK Book Award include Vice President Al Gore, Congressman John Lewis, Taylor Branch, Toni Morrison, and Jonathon Kozol.
Robert F. Kennedy boldly faced tough problems and challenged the comfortable and complacent. To keep his vision alive, his family and friends founded a living memorial in 1968. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial is dedicated to advancing the human rights movement through providing innovative support to courageous human rights defenders around the world. Through long-term partnerships and cutting edge methods, it assists advocates who have won the RFK Human Rights Award to boldly confront injustice. Through the combined power of arts and education, the RFK Memorial's SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER program seeks to proactively engage the general public by bringing human rights activists and their work into contact with ever-increasing audiences. Over the past four years, SPEAK TRUTH has grown from a book by Kerry Kennedy exploring the courage in the words of leading human rights defenders to a moving and inspirational play by Ariel Dorfman, a photographic exhibition by Pulitzer Prize-winner Eddie Adams, a PBS documentary, an educational packet, and a series of public service announcements.
