Person

J. Anthony Lukas

The 1986 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was presented to Robert Norell for Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee and J. Anthony Lukas for Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families.

Also a Pulitzer Prize winner, Common Ground recounts Boston’s busing crisis in the tumultuous years following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Lukas tells the story through the lens of three families: one headed by a working-class Irish-American widow, one by a working-class African-American mother, and the other white, liberal, and upper-middle-class.

J. Anthony Lukas was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of numerous books. His groundbreaking work documenting race relations and class conflict in 20th-century America was published in numerous publications including the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The New Republic, and Harper’s Magazine. He also worked as a journalist for The New York Times for nine years. He passed away in 1997.

New year, new us. Same mission.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights is rebranding to honor the legacy of our founder and hero, Mrs. Ethel Skakel Kennedy. From now on, we will proudly be known as the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center

While our name is changing, our mission and work remain the same. We will continue to fight injustice, advance human rights, and hold governments accountable around the world in 2026 and beyond.