By Jackie Jones

David Levering Lewis said he enjoys the intellectual rigor of scholarly research. He also likes it because “mostly it’s inside work.”

The charismatic Lewis, a highly decorated historian, was one of eight Americans—two of them African American—awarded National Humanities Medals for outstanding achievements in history, literature, cultural philanthropy and museum leadership by President Obama in a glittering ceremony February 25 in the East Wing of the White House.

The Humanities Medals were awarded as part of  joint ceremony in which ten other distinguished Americans were each honored with a National Medal of the Arts for their accomplishments in the performance and visual arts, in architecture and landscape design, and in the leadership of arts institutions or projects.

“It was a great thing to have happen,” said Lewis, the Julius Silver Professor and professor of history at New York University and a double Pulitzer Prize winner—one for each volume of his two-part biography of W.E.B. Du Bois.

Lewis was honored for his research on Du Bois, the Dreyfus Affair, and early Islamic-Christian relations in Europe, “which have enriched our understanding of the figures and forces that shaped world history,” according to the official citation from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announcing the honorees.

Also receiving a Humanities Medal was Annette Gordon-Reed, who conducted extensive research on the slaves of Thomas Jefferson and the family of Sally Hemings and won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in history for her 2008 book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.

“It is important to see enslaved people as individuals, which in turn enables us to see their humanity,” Gordon-Reed, who teaches law at New York Law School and history at Rutgers University, said in a statement about the awards.

“While it is true that records of enslaved Americans can be frustratingly skimpy, historians often failed to examine the records that did exist. As the property of one of the most famous men in America, the Hemingses left a more visible paper trail than most slaves of their era—a trail which Gordon-Reed followed through years of research into the outermost reaches of Jefferson’s and the Hemingses’ lives in America and Europe,” the NEH said in the statement.

Gordon-Reed is busy at work on four books, including a sequel to her book on the Hemings family, a biography of President Andrew Johnson and what may ultimately become a multi-volume biography of Jefferson.

The National Humanities Medal honors individuals or groups whose work has expanded the country’s understanding and engagement with the humanities or helped to preserve and expand access to resources in the humanities. A maximum of 12 medals may be awarded each year.

Also honored with a Humanities Medal were: Robert Caro, biographer of Robert Moses and President Lyndon Johnson; historian William H. McNeil; Phillipe de Montebello, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Albert H. Small, a philianthropist and collector; Theodore C. Sorensen, President John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter and counselor; singer and songwriter Bob Dylan; and actor and director Clint Eastwood.

Those honored with the National Medal of the Arts were: Milton Glaser, the graphic artists; Maya Lin, the arhcitect and artists who created the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial; Rita Moreno, the Broadway and film star; Jessye Norman, the oepra diva; David Stahl, director of the renowned Oberlin Conservatory of Music; the painter and sculptor Frank Stella; Michael Tilson Thomas, the symphony orchestra conductor; and the composer John Williams.

“It was a little bit of an anticlimax because I was told I had received the honor in November,” but the ceremony was postponed after the November shooting rampage at Ft. Hood in Texas that left 12 dead and 31 injured, Lewis said.

Lewis understands conflict very well. It informs much of his research: Du Bois’ prickly behavior, Europe’s struggle to control Africa, the Dreyfus Affair, the case involving espionage and anti-Semitism that bitterly divided France at the end of the 19th century and Americans’ reaction to the Middle East in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I was certain we (the U.S.) wouldn’t be prudent in our response and that we would take advantage and do things that would get us into trouble,” Lewis told TheRoot.com in a recent interview.

“History has always been an appeal, and once I get into the momentum of a certain amount of success it was rewarding,” Lewis told The Defenders Online, adding that he loves learning new details about a historical figure or a period of time that no one else appears to have discovered.

In the fall, Lewis and his wife will go to Abu Dhabi to help launch NYU’s new program in the Persian Gulf, teaching a seminar called “When There Were Two Europes: Islam and Christendom.”

“It’s a little presumptuous to try to solve the immediate problems of the world on the basis of things that happened remotely,” he said. “There is a tension you have to live with and there a couple of things you can do. One is to do your best and be willing to sort out and see that things in the past have a relevancy we should be mindful of in the present.”

Jackie Jones is a freelance writer as well as a career and fitness coach for those who want to get their lives in shape.