John Bardes ’08 earns Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History
Bardes studied history at Carleton.
The Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) and the Louisiana Historical Association (LHA) announced in March that John Bardes ’08, assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University, won the 2024 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History for his book, The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803–1930 (University of North Carolina Press, 2024).
Mustering tens of thousands of previously overlooked arrest and prison records, John K. Bardes demonstrates that, contrary to common opinion, enslaved and free people were jailed at astronomical rates in parts of the South. With powerful and evocative prose, Bardes boldly reinterprets relations between slavery and prison development in American history. Racialized policing and mass incarceration are among the gravest moral crises of our age, but they are not new: slavery, the prison, and race are deeply interwoven into the history of American governance.
The Kemper and Leila Williams Prize, named for the founders of the Historic New Orleans Collection, is offered annually by HNOC and the LHA. Since its inception in 1974, the prize has recognized excellence in research and writing on Louisiana history. Recipients receive a cash award of $1,500 and a plaque, and are announced at the LHA’s annual meeting each year. The organization held its 67th annual meeting March 13–15, 2025 in Baton Rouge.