He has produced a number of works on the people and descendants of the African Diaspora.
[5] In 1978 Holt was awarded the Southern Historical Association's Charles S. Sydnor Prize for his first book, Black Over White.
[6] A past president of the American Historical Association, Holt was a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars from 1987 to 1988.
[7] In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Holt to the National Council on Humanities.
[9] He was a Citigroup Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for Fall 2008.