Announcing the inaugural recipient of the Zane L. Miller Book Development Award

John Tilghman, Associate Professor and Interim Department Chair of History and Political Science at Tuskegee University, has been named the inaugural recipient of the Temple University Press (TUP) Zane L. Miller Book Development Award for his proposed book, currently titled Jim Crow from the Harbor: Black Freedom Struggle and Downtown Baltimore. He will receive $2,500 to fund the development of his urban studies-focused book manuscript.

When presenting Tilghman with the award, the committee noted that his book “provides new perspectives on downtown development, African American history, Baltimore history, and the complexities of class in urban America.”

The prize, named in honor of the late founding editor of TUP’s Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series, is designed to advance the careers of scholars from underrepresented communities who have limited access to financial resources for book development. It also honors Miller, a renowned scholar of urban history and a devoted, tireless mentor to less-experienced fellow authors seeking to navigate the book development and publication process. 

David Stradling, coeditor of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series said, “Dr. Tilghman’s work revises the story of the white growth machine’s late 20^th century efforts to protect downtown Baltimore through segregation, redevelopment, and displacement by putting Black voices and Black activism at the center of the story. In Tilghman’s telling, Black home buyers remake Baltimore’s central city neighborhoods, Black shoppers force the desegregation of downtown stores, and Black activists reshape Baltimore politics. Ultimately, efforts to create an all-white citadel in the central city can only crumble.”  

Upon receiving the award, Tilghman said, “Winning the Zane L. Miller Book Development Award is a tremendous honor. I would like to thank the editors at Temple University Press, and particularly Dr. David Stradling and Dr. Davarian Baldwin, for helping me make this proposed book more insightful and impactful.”

Jim Crow from the Harbor examines Baltimore’s downtown redevelopment of the Charles Center and Inner Harbor-Harborplace through the lens of the city’s civil rights movement, with particular attention paid to how these initiatives succeeded in producing a glitzy façade of a revitalized downtown American city while severely constraining the lives of its Black residents.

Tilghman explores the origins and importance of urban tensions between the Black community and downtown interests after the Second Great Migration and during the postwar Civil Rights and Black Power era, the implementation of urban development projects, and anti-freeway and affirmative action campaigns. The author’s research uncovers how a public-private partnership—a coalition of real estate agents, businesspeople, city politicians, and housing developers— worked to exacerbate racial and class segregation and destroy Black communities by expanding the downtown beyond the central business district.

The Zane L. Miller Book Development Award is given annually.

For submission information, please visit https://tupress.temple.edu/webpages/zane-miller-award.

Announcing the Zane L. Miller Book Development Award

This week in North Philly Notes, we are pleased to announce an award to help mentor and support up-and-coming scholars.

Temple University Press and the editors of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series are pleased to announce the Zane L. Miller Book Development Award, named in honor of our late founding series editor. Professor Miller, a renowned scholar of urban history, was equally well known as a devoted, tireless mentor to less-experienced fellow authors seeking to navigate the book development and publication process. This award was initially put forward by current series coeditor Davarian Baldwin, as a way of advancing the careers of scholars from underrepresented communities with limited financial resources while also honoring Miller, who died in 2016.

In that spirit, we invite first-time authors to apply for a grant of up to $2,500 to help defray costs such as travel, freelancer fees, permissions costs, and other expenses related to the development of an urban studies-focused book manuscript. Awardees will also be assigned to work directly with one of the series editors who will act as a mentor and sounding board through the proposal, peer review, board approval, and final manuscript stages, with the ultimate goal of publication in the series.

About the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series
Edited by David Stradling, Larry Bennett, and Davarian Baldwin, the series was founded by the late Zane L. Miller to publish books that examine past and contemporary cities. While preserving the series’ foundational focus on the policy, planning, and environmental issues so central to metropolitan life, we also join scholarly efforts to push the boundaries of urban studies. We are committed to publishing work at the shifting intersections of cultural production, community formation, and political economy that shape cities at all scales, from the neighborhood to the transnational.

About Temple University Press
Founded in 1969, Temple University Press chose as its inspiration Russell Conwell’s vision of the university as a place of educational opportunity for the urban working class. The Press is perhaps best known as a publisher of books in the social sciences and the humanities, as well as books about Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region. Temple was an early publisher of books in urban studies, housing and labor studies, organizational reform, social service reform, public religion, health care, and cultural studies. It became one of the first university presses to publish in what later became the fields of women’s studies, ethnic studies— including Asian American and Latino studies, as well as African American Studies.