The James A. Rawley Prize is given by the Organization of American Historians (OAH), for the best book on race relations in the United States. The prize is given in memory of James A. Rawley, Carl Adolph Happold Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.[1]
| Year | Winner OAH Rawley Prize | Title of OAH Rawley Prize | Affiliation |
| 1990 | Kenneth L. Karstbio | Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution (Yale University Press) | UCLA School of Law |
| 1991 | Douglas Monroybio | Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (University of California Press) | Colorado College |
| 1992 co-winner | Richard White | The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge University Press) | Stanford University |
| 1992 co-winner | Ramón A. Gutiérrez | When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford University Press) | University of California, San Diego |
| 1993 | Edward L. Ayers | The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (Oxford University Press) | University of Virginia |
| 1994 | Michael K. Honeybio | Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (University of Illinois Press) | |
| 1995 | Nancy MacLeanbio | Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (Oxford University Press) | Northwestern University |
| 1996 | Peter W. Bardagliobio | Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth Century South (University of North Carolina Press) | Goucher College |
| 1997 | Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore | Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (University of North Carolina Press) | Yale University |
| 1998 | Daryl Michael Scottbio | Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996 (University of North Carolina Press) | Columbia University |
| 1999 | Brian Wardbio | Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (University of California Press) | University of Newcastle upon Tyne |
| 2000 | Timothy B. Tyson | Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (University of North Carolina Press) | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| 2001 | Sherry L. Smith | Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes 1880–1940 (Oxford University Press) | Southern Methodist University |
| 2002 co-winner | J. William Harrisbio | Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation (Johns Hopkins University Press) | University of New Hampshire |
| 2002 co-winner | David W. Blight | Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press) | Amherst College |
| 2003 co-winner | Sharla M. Fettbio | Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (University of North Carolina Press) | Occidental College |
| 2003 co-winner | Shane Whitebio | Stories of Freedom in Black New York (University of North Carolina Press) | University of Sydney |
| 2004 | Barbara Ransby | Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (University of North Carolina Press) | University of Illinois at Chicago |
| 2005 | Robert O. Self bio | American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton University Press) | Brown University |
| 2006 | James Edward Smethurstbio | The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (University of North Carolina Press) | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| 2007 | Paul A. Kramerbio | The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (University of North Carolina Press) | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor |
| 2008 | Susan Eva O'Donovanbio | Becoming Free in the Cotton South (Harvard University Press) | Harvard University |
| 2009 | Vincent Brown | The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Harvard University Press) | Harvard University |
| 2010 | Julie Greene | The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (The Penguin Press) | University of Maryland, College Park |
| 2011 | Daniel Martinez HoSang | Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (University of California Press) | University of Oregon |
| 2012 | Cindy Hahamovitch | No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton University Press) | College of William & Mary |
| 2013 | Laura Briggs | Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Duke University Press) | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| 2014 | Brenda E. Stevenson | The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots (Oxford University Press) | University of California |
| 2015 | Daniel Berger | Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (The University of North Carolina Press) | University of Washington, Bothell |
| 2016 | Margaret Ellen Newell | Brethren By Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press) | Ohio State University |
| 2017 | Robert G. Parkinson | The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution (The University of North Carolina Press) | Binghamton University |
| 2018 co-winner | Kelly Lytle Hernández | City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (The University of North Carolina Press) | UCLA |
| 2018 co-winner | Tiya Miles | The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (The New Press) | University of Michigan |
| 2019 | Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press) | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| 2020 | Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Home Ownership (The University of North Carolina Press) | Princeton University |
| 2021 | Vincent Brown | Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) | Harvard University |
| 2022 | Destin Jenkins | The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (University of Chicago Press) | Stanford University |
| 2023 | Michael Witgen | Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of North Carolina Press) | Columbia University |