Dr. Leigh Fought of the Le Moyne College History Department will be honored this April with the Lehman Award, given for excellence in scholarship in New York History. This is Dr. Fought’s fourth published book as a historian.

The Lehman Award is named after Herbert H. Lehman, the 45th Governor of New York. The award is given for Distinguished Scholarship in historical research and writing for non-fiction books that give substantial attention to this area.

Dr. Fought’s book won for her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass which was published in May 2017 by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Fought said that many of her former students think she has an obsession with Frederick Douglass and that she wasn’t really writing a book, but this award is “the reason for the fixation and the actual book,” she said.

Dr. Fought has been working on the book for several years, which is something that she is very proud of. She said the Lehman Award was never a personal goal of hers, though.

“You just want to write a good book,” she said. “Then you just want to finish the thing and see it in print.”

Dr. Fought said she was absolutely ecstatic when she found out she won. “I screamed and yelled and jumped up and down,” she said.

Dr. Fought even said she didn’t truly see this book as something about New York history, which is what the Lehman Award is given out for. “Usually people think of New York as the city,” she said.

The professors at Le Moyne have been congratulatory of Dr. Fought since the award was announced. “When someone here accomplishes something, we are always happy for each other because we know the work that goes into it,” Fought said.

The Lehman Award will be presented in April at a ceremony in New York City and Dr. Fought will be there to receive it.