Diane McWhorter

A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Diane McWhorter is an author, journalist, and scholar who has written extensively about American race relations and civil rights. Her first book, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama – The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 2001) won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, as well as six other nationwide book awards and multiple nominations in national newspapers and magazines. Her second book, a young-adult history of the civil rights movement, also received a high degree of recognition, including being named one of the Notable Children’s Books of 2004 by the New York Times. As a journalist McWhorter regularly contributes articles on race, politics, and culture to the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and People, among others, and contributes to the op-ed pages of USA Today and Slate. A frequent lecturer on these topics, she has served on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University. While at the Academy, McWhorter will be working on a book about Hitler’s missile pioneer Wernher von Braun, who was brought to America after World War II along with a team of Third Reich scientists to design the rocket that ultimately put the first man on the moon. The book will track von Braun’s team from Nazi Germany to Huntsville, Alabama – in the heart of the segregated American South – chronicling the political, social, and cultural history of the Saturn V moon rocket.