2003: "AT THE HANDS OF PERSONS UNKNOWN", BY PHILIP DRAY; AND "A PROBLEM FROM HELL", BY SAMANTHA POWER

Judges: Annette Gordon-Reed, Robert Kuttner, Jeff Norrell, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Seigenthaler, Sr., and Rose Styron

Grand Prize Co-Winner: At the Hands of Persons Unknown, by Philip Dray; and

A Problem from Hell, by Samantha Power

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Washington, D.C. -The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial is pleased to announce the selection of Philip Dray's At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America and Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide as the winners of the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Selected from a field of over 80 nominees, these books represent both the domestic and international issues that were of paramount concern to Robert Kennedy.

Arthur Schlesinger, Co-chair of the RFK Book Award, noted, At the Hands of Persons Unknown is an incisive and well-documented history of a profoundly disgusting chapter in the American past the lynching of black Americans. Philip Dray places the terrible story in a larger cultural context and tells how reformers finally awakened the national conscience. A Problem from Hell is the curse of genocide that shadows and shames the contemporary world. Samantha Power challenges the international conscience by her compelling account of the horrors taking place while so many of us pass by on the other side of the road.