Upcoming Events
2024 The Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award
Awarded Annually By The Rutgers Living History Society
2024 Recipient
Julieanna Richardson
Founder & President
The HistoryMakers
Richardson has a diverse background in theatre, television production, and the cable television industry that created a unique path to founding the largest effort to record the African American experience since the WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930s. Founded in 2000, The HistoryMakers is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit educational institution headquartered in Chicago that has grown to be the digital repository for the black experience.
In 2014, Black Enterprise magazine awarded Richardson its 2014 Legacy Award, its highest recognition of women’s achievement. That same year, Richardson was profiled in American Masters: The Boomer List, a PBS documentary and exhibition at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. She is a 2021 recipient of the Chicago History Museum’s John Hope Franklin Making History Award. Her TedTalk “The Mission to Safeguard Black History in the U.S.” was featured in 2022; and, in 2023, she was featured on 60 Minutes.
THE STEPHEN E. AMBROSE ORAL HISTORY AWARD is presented annually by The Rutgers University Living History Society to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the practice and/or use of oral history. The award is named for the late historian and author Stephen E. Ambrose, who helped guide the Rutgers Oral History Archives program at its inception in 1994 and who served on its Academic Advisory Board for the balance of his life.
The RLHS Annual Meeting will take place on Friday, April 26, 2024 at the Busch Campus Student Center, Multipurpose Room.
Brunch begins at 9:00 AM. The program begins at 10:00 AM.
RSVP by April 19, 2024 to Shaun Illingworth at
Please mail your check to the Rutgers Oral History Archives, 1 Spring Street, Room 417, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Past Recipients
Tom Brokaw - 2005
Steven Spielberg - 2006
Studs Terkel - 2007
Rick Atkinson - 2008
Ken Burns - 2009
David Isay - 2010
Michael & Elizabeth Norman - 2011
Isabel Wilkerson - 2012
Michael Beschloss - 2013
Peter Bergen - 2014
Jacqueline Dowd Hall - 2015
Ric Burns - 2016
John Whiteclay Chambers II - 2017
James Bradley - 2018
Deborah Gray White - 2019
Doug Stanton - 2020-21
Svetlana Alexievich - 2022-23