Who We Are
The Langum Foundation is a private operating foundation that awards book and media prizes and makes travel-to-collections grants. We have received a determination letter from the Internal Revenue Service recognizing our charitable status under IRC 501 (c)(3). Contributions to the Foundation are tax deductible.
Our Background and What We Do
Research Library, © Ron Lewis, depicts a scholar working in a cozy corner of the main reading room, Linn-Henley Research Library, Birmingham, Alabama.
David J. Langum, Sr. founded The Langum Initiative for Historical Literature in 2001, which soon became The Langum Charitable Trust, later The Langum Foundation, out of a conviction that too many historians today write only for each other’s reading and not for the general public. As a result the American public is left uninformed of the nation’s past to the detriment of both individual Americans and also the body politic. The Foundation sought to redress this condition by rewarding and encouraging books that make the rich history of America from the colonial period to the present accessible to the educated general public. One prize is in American historical fiction, and another is in Professor Langum’s personal scholarly specialty, American legal history.
The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction has been suspended. At the February 12, 2024 meeting, the Board of Directors resolved to suspend the operations of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction. This action was taken at the recommendation of the Selection Committee. The problem is that we have had a recurrent and serious difficulty in acquiring and retaining initial readers. This year we had approximately 45 submissions, and this was somewhat lower than previously. However, we had readers for only the first few months of 2023, and there is no reason to believe this difficulty will be resolved, at least in the immediate future. This volume of books creates an extreme and unsustainable burden for our two-person Selection Committee to handle themselves. The Foundation will continue to award the Langum Prize in American Legal History and Biography and the Malott prize for Recording Community Activism. The original text describing this Prize is retained for historical purposes.
The Malott Prize has recently joined our list. It seeks to encourage the public’s understanding of community-based social, political, and environmental activism and reward that activism itself, through a prize encouraging media description and recording of such local activism.
The Foundation also encourages the scholarly use of the personal and family papers that Professor Langum donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (formerly Illinois State Historical Library), Springfield, Illinois, and certain of his legal papers, 1968-1978, which Professor Langum has donated to the San Jose State University Library, Special Collections, San Jose, California. For more information, see “Travel to Collections“