Coretta Scott King Award

History

The idea for the Coretta Scott King Award came from Glyndon Flynt Greer, a school librarian in Englewood, New Jersey. At a meeting of the American Library Association in Atlantic City in 1969, Greer, librarian Mabel McKissick, and publisher John M. Carroll, lamented the lack of recognition for minority writers. No person of color had won either the Newbery or Caldecott Medals at that time. Before the conference ended, a group of African American librarians had formed to promote the creation of a new award. Among them were Augusta Braxton Baker, Charlemae Hill Rollins, and Virginia Lacy Jones. The award's name was intentionally chosen to honor recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King. The first Coretta Scott King Award was presented to Lillie Patterson, a librarian in Baltimore, for her elementary level biography Martin Luther King, Jr.: Man of Peace.

Early sponsors of the award included the New Jersey Library Association, and the library councils of the Englewood Middle School and Dwight Morrow High School.With support from Roger McDonough, the third annual Coretta Scott King Award was presented during the American Library Association's 1972 Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois. The award was briefly sponsored by the School of Library and Information Studies at Atlanta University from 1974 to 1976. In 1976, a separate awards committee and an advisory board of mostly local librarians were formed, co-chaired by Ella Gaines Yates.

In 1974, the award was expanded to honor illustrators as well as authors. The first illustrator to receive the award was George Ford, for his work in illustrating Ray Charles by Sharon Bell Mathis. Starting in 1978, the runner-ups for the author prize were listed as Honor Books, and beginning in 1981 the illustrator runner-ups were also listed as Honor Books.

In 1979, the awards committee and the advisory board merged, forming the Coretta Scott King Award Task Force. With support from E. J. Josey, the new committee became part of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) of the American Library Association. Greer served as its first chair until her death on 24 August 1980. Harriet Brown then became acting chair. Brown was succeeded by Effie Lee Morris in 1981. Under Morris' leadership, the Coretta Scott King Awards were officially recognized by the executive board of the ALA. Morris wrote formal selection criteria for the awards to meet ALA's standards, and the Coretta Scott King Awards were accepted as an ALA unit award in 1982, the twelfth year that they had been given.

Winning books receive a medal; honor books receive a certificate. Winning and honor books are identified by the presence on their covers of the Coretta Scott King Award Seal. The original seal was designed by artist Lev Mills in 1974, with a bronze seal on winning books and a pewter seal on honor books. In a later revision of the seal, the colors changed to bronze and black for winners, and pewter and black for honors.

The award eventually changed its ALA affiliation from the SRRT to the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT), which had previously been a task force of the SRRT and was a closer match for its activities. In 2022 The Coretta Scott King Book Award was designated an official ALA Round Table: the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Round Table.

Dr. Henrietta M. Smith edited four volumes, published by the American Library Association, that provide a history of the award.

From 1996 on, the Coretta Scott King Awards program includes the John Steptoe Award for New Talent, optionally awarded to an author, an illustrator, or both.

Recipients