Pulitzer Prizes: Special Citations

Updated September 9, 2022 | Infoplease Staff

(For years not listed, no award was made.)

1938

Edmonton [Alberta] Journal, special bronze plaque for editorial leadership in defense of freedom of the press in province of Alberta

1941

New York Times, for the public educational value of its foreign news report

1944

Byron Price, director of the Office of Censorship, for the creation and administration of the newspaper and radio codes; Mrs. William Allen White, for her husband's interest and services during the past seven years as a member of the Advisory Board of the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University; Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, for their musical Oklahoma!

1945

The cartographers of the American press, for their war maps

1947

(Pulitzer centennial year.) Columbia University and the Graduate School of Journalism, for their efforts to maintain and advance the high standards governing the Pulitzer Prize awards; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for its unswerving adherence to the public and professional ideals of its founder and its leadership in American journalism

1948

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, for his interest and service

1951

Cyrus L. Sulzberger (New York Times), for his exclusive interview with Archbishop Stepinac in a Yugoslav prison

1952

Kansas City Star, for coverage of 1951 floods; Max Kase (New York Journal–American), for exposures of bribery in basketball

1953

New York Times, for its 17-year publication of “Review of the Week,” and Lester Markel, its founder

1957

Kenneth Roberts, for his historical novels

1958

Walter Lippmann (New York Herald Tribune), for his “wisdom, perception and high sense of responsibility” in his commentary on national and international affairs

1960

Garrett Mattingly, for The Armada

1961

American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, as a distinguished example of American book publishing

1964

Gannett Newspapers, Rochester, N.Y.

1973

James Thomas Flexner, for his biography George Washington

1974

Roger Sessions, for his “life's work in music”

1976

John Hohenberg, for “services for 22 years as Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes”; Scott Joplin, for his contributions to American music

1977

Alex Haley, for his novel, Roots

1978

E. B. White of New Yorker magazine and Richard L. Strout of The Christian Science Monitor

1982

Milton Babbitt, “for his life's work as a distinguished and seminal American composer”

1984

Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), for “books full of playful rhymes, nonsense words and strange illustrations”

1985

William Schuman, for “more than half a century of contribution to American music as a composer and educational leader”

1987

Joseph Pulitzer Jr., “for extraordinary services to American journalism and letters during his 31 years as chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board and for his accomplishments as an editor and publisher”

1992

Maus, Art Spiegelman

1996

Herb Caen (San Francisco Chronicle), “for his extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of his city”

1998

George Gershwin

1999

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, who “made an indelible contribution to art and culture”

2006

Edmund S. Morgan, for his creative and deeply influential body of work as an American historian and posthumously to Thelonious Monk, for his significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz.

2007

John Coltrane, a posthumous special citation for his masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz; and to Ray Bradbury for his distinguished, prolific, and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.