Pitt historian Alaina E. Roberts won the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize

Alaina E. Roberts, an assistant professor of history in Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize for her first book, “I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land.”

The prize celebrates the most outstanding work about the Great Plains during the past year and is accompanied by a medal and a $10,000 check.

The prize committee said Roberts’ book is "a transformative work in its conceptualization of narratives about slavery, indigenous people, and settler colonialism in the Great Plains."

Earlier this year, the book was also named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize.

Read an excerpt from the book that discusses the Tulsa Race Massacre.