# NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction

This article lists the winners and nominees for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction. Maya Angelou, Michael Eric Dyson, and Barack Obama hold the record for most wins in this category, with two each.

## Winners and nominees
### 1990s

Award winners, 1994-1999 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 1994 | By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of 'Malcolm X' | Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley | Winner |
| 1996 | | | |
| 1996 | When We Were Colored | Clifton Taulbert | Winner |
| 1999 | | | |
| 1999 | With Ossie & Ruby: In This Life Together | Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee | Winner |

### 2000s

Award winners, 2002-2009 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2002 | Sally Hemings, An American Scandal | Tina Andrews | Winner |
| 2003 | Keeping the Faith | Tavis Smiley | Winner |
| 2003 | A Song Flung Up to Heaven | Maya Angelou | Finalist |
| 2003 | Bill Clinton and Black America | DeWayne Wickham | Finalist |
| 2003 | Growing Up X | Ilyasah Shabazz | Finalist |
| 2003 | Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters | Carla Kaplan | Finalist |
| 2004 | Why I Love Black Women | Michael Eric Dyson | Winner |
| 2005 | Hallelujah! The Welcome Table | Maya Angelou | Winner |
| 2006 | Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? | Michael Eric Dyson | Winner |
| 2006 | Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir | Stanley Williams | Finalist |
| 2006 | The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters and Speeches | Manning Marable and Myrlie Evers-Williams | Finalist |
| 2006 | 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality in America | Anthony Asadullah Samad | Finalist |
| 2006 | Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America | John McWhorter | Finalist |
| 2007 | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream | Barack Obama | Winner |
| 2007 | Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster | Michael Eric Dyson | Finalist |
| 2007 | The Covenant with Black America | Stanley Williams | Finalist |
| 2007 | Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete | William C. Rhoden | Finalist |
| 2007 | Not in My Family: AIDS in the African American Community | Gil L. Robertson | Finalist |
| 2008 | Not on Our Watch | Don Cheadle and John Prendergast | Winner |
| 2008 | An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President | Randall Robinson | Finalist |
| 2008 | Brother, I'm Dying | Edwidge Danticat | Finalist |
| 2008 | Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip-Hop | Michael Eric Dyson | Finalist |
| 2008 | Race and Racism in the Chinas: Chinese Racial Attitudes Toward Africans and African-Americans | M. Dujon Johnson | Finalist |
| 2009 | Letter to My Daughter | Maya Angelou | Winner |

### 2010s

Award winners, 2010-2019 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2010 | In Search of Our Roots | Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Winner |
| 2010 | Freedom in My Heart: Voices From the United States National Slavery Museum | Cynthia Carter | Finalist |
| 2010 | Our Choice | Al Gore | Finalist |
| 2010 | Brain Surgeon: A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters With Mortality and Miracles | Arnold Mann and Keith Black | Finalist |
| 2010 | Family Affair: What It Means to Be African American Today | Gil L. Robertson | Finalist |
| 2011 | The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness | Michelle Alexander | Winner |
| 2011 | Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority | Tom Burrell | Finalist |
| 2011 | Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in SNCC | Faith S. Holsaert | Finalist |
| 2011 | Surviving and Thriving 365 Days in Black Economic History | Julianne Malveaux | Finalist |
| 2011 | The History of White People | Nell Irvin Painter | Finalist |
| 2012 | The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in Its Place | Hill Harper | Winner |
| 2012 | Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America | Melissa Harris-Perry | Finalist |
| 2012 | Super Rich | Russell Simmons | Finalist |
| 2012 | The Cosmopolitan Canopy | Elijah Anderson | Finalist |
| 2012 | Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now | Touré | Finalist |
| 2013 | The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court | Jeffrey Toobin | Winner |
| 2013 | Fraternity | Diane Brady | Finalist |
| 2013 | Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation | Deborah Davis | Finalist |
| 2013 | Power Concedes Nothing: One Woman's Quest for Social Justice in America, from the Courtroom to the Kill Zones | Connie Rice | Finalist |
| 2013 | The Courage to Hope | Shirley Sherrod | Finalist |
| 2014 | Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery | Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer | Winner |
| 2014 | Bartlett's Familiar Black Quotations: 5,000 Years of Literature, Lyrics, Poems, Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs from Voices Around the World | Retha Powers | Finalist |
| 2014 | High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society | Carl Hart | Finalist |
| 2014 | Letters to an Incarcerated Brother: Encouragement, Hope, and Healing for Inmates and Their Loved Ones | Hill Harper | Finalist |
| 2014 | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Donald Yacovone | Finalist |
| 2015 | Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Bryan Stevenson | Winner |
| 2015 | Bad Feminist | Roxane Gay | Finalist |
| 2015 | Place Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America | Sheryll Cashin | Finalist |
| 2015 | Who We Be: The Colorization of America | Jeff Chang | Finalist |
| 2016 | Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga | Pamela Newkirk | Winner |
| 2016 | 50 Billion Dollar Boss: African American Women Sharing Stories of Success in Entrepreneurship and Leadership | Kathey Porter and Andrea Hoffman | Finalist |
| 2016 | Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America | Jill Leovy | Finalist |
| 2016 | Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America | Wil Haygood | Finalist |
| 2016 | The Light of the World | Elizabeth Alexander | Finalist |
| 2017 | Hidden Figures | Margot Lee Shetterly | Winner |
| 2017 | Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul | Eddie S. Glaude | Finalist |
| 2017 | Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America | Ibram X. Kendi | Finalist |
| 2017 | Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld | Finalist |
| 2018 | Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies | Dick Gregory (posthumous) | Winner |
| 2018 | Black Detroit – A People’s History of Self-Determination | Herb Boyd | Finalist |
| 2018 | Chokehold: Policing Black Men | Paul Butler | Finalist |
| 2018 | The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas | Adrian Miller | Finalist |
| 2018 | We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Finalist |
| 2019 | For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics | Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah D. Daughtry, Minyon Moore, Veronica Chambers | Winner |
| 2019 | Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" | Zora Neale Hurston | Finalist |
| 2019 | Black Girls Rock! Owning Our Magic. Rocking Our Truth | Beverly Bond | Finalist |
| 2019 | May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem | Imani Perry | Finalist |
| 2019 | The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row | Anthony Ray Hinton and Lara Love Hardin | Finalist |

### 2020s

Award winners, 2020-present :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2020 | The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations | Toni Morrison | Winner |
| 2020 | Breathe: A Letter to My Sons | Imani Perry | Finalist |
| 2020 | STONY THE ROAD: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow | Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Finalist |
| 2020 | The Yellow House | Sarah M. Broom | Finalist |
| 2020 | What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essay | Damon Young | Finalist |
| 2021 | A Promised Land | Barack Obama | Winner |
| 2021 | A Black Women's History of the United States | Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross | Finalist |
| 2021 | Driving While Black | Gretchen Sorin | Finalist |
| 2021 | Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America | Michael Eric Dyson | Finalist |
| 2021 | We're Better Than This | Elijah Cummings | Finalist |
| 2022 | The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story | Nikole Hannah-Jones | Winner |
| 2022 | Dance Theatre of Harlem | Judy Tyrus and Paul Novosel | Finalist |
| 2022 | Just As I Am | Cicely Tyson | Finalist |
| 2022 | My Remarkable Journey | Katherine Johnson | Finalist |
| 2022 | Renegades: Born in the USA | Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen | Finalist |
| 2023 | Finding Me | Viola Davis | Winner |
| 2023 | Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America | Cody Keenan | Finalist |
| 2023 | Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation | Linda Villarosa | Finalist |
| 2023 | Who’s Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race | Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Andrew S. Curran | Finalist |
| 2023 | Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre | RJ Young | Finalist |
| 2024 | The New Brownies’ Book | Karida L. Brown and Charly Palmer | Winner |
| 2024 | Black AF History: The Un–Whitewashed Story of America | Michael Harriot | Finalist |
| 2024 | BLK ART: The Audacious Legacy of Black Artists and Models in Western Art | Zaria Ware | Finalist |
| 2024 | Iconic Home: Interiors, Advice, and Stories from 50 Amazing Black Designers | Black Interior Designers and June Reese | Finalist |
| 2024 | The Art of Ruth E. Carter | Ruth E. Carter | Finalist |

## Multiple wins and nominations
### Wins
#### 2 wins

* Maya Angelou
* Michael Eric Dyson
* Barack Obama