Martha S. Jones

Martha S. Jones (she/her/hers)

Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, Professor at the SNF Agora Institute, and Director of Graduate Studies

Contact Information

Research Interests: Race and rights in the 19th century U.S. with an emphasis on slavery, law, gender, and visual culture

Education: PhD, Columbia University

I am a writer, historian, legal scholar and public intellectual whose work is devoted to understanding the politics, culture, and poetics of Black America. You can find me at work in seminar rooms, at podiums, in front of microphones, and on the pages of books, newspapers, Substack, and social media. My happy place is the archives where I never tire of the adventure of discovery. When I’m looking for sustenance, you can find me in museum galleries where artists, by way of beauty and provocation, challenge my ideas and nourish my spirit.

My creative practice is rooted in the personal essay. My latest book – The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (2025) – recounts my personal journey with race and color through the story of my ancestors’ generations. You’ll recognize signs of my historian’s research skills, but you will also discover how I have felt about inheriting the troubles of the jagged color line – from slavery and sexual violence through passing and colorism. I am grateful to venues from CNN to the Michigan Quarterly Review and Claudia Rankine’s Racial Imaginary Institute for nurturing the stories that have taken full form in The Trouble of Color.

I am the author of prize-winning histories that survey the vast American past, from slavery and the founding, Civil War and Reconstruction, and women’s suffrage and Jim Crow, on through modern Civil Rights and present-day race and identity. My 2020 book, Vanguard chronicled a long struggle for the ballot from the first Black women preachers on through the candidacy of Kamala Harris. Birthright Citizens (2018) told a new history of citizenship in the U.S. as the product of Black American activism and persistence. My work is grounded by women’s history, and Black feminist theory and my first two books – the edited Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015) and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture: 1830 to 1900 (2007)are that foundation.

My work has received far-ranging support and recognition including book prizes from the Los Angeles Times, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Society for Legal History. ASLH in fall 2024 named me an honorary fellow, the highest honor that the society bestows. Deeply meaningful are the distinctions extended to me by my alma maters. In 2019, the CUNY School of Law awarded me an honorary doctor of laws degree; in 2021 Columbia University granted me the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement, and in 2024 Hunter College inducted me into the school’s hall of fame. Fellowships from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study,) the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Humanities Center. I am an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society, the Society of American Historians, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 2023, President Joe Biden appointed me a member of the Permanent Committee on the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise.

Expect to encounter my by-line from time to time. For the New York Times I have written on culture and travel, including the widely read “Enslaved to A Founding Father, She Sought Freedom in France” about Abigail, an enslaved woman held by the family of John Jay. My opinion columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Politico, Talking Points Memo, and USA Today. You can also hear or see me via outlets such as NPR’s Here & Now and 1A, CNN’s Amanpour, and MSNBC’s the Rachel Maddow Show. Podcasts such as the Ezra Klein Show and the 19th*’s Amendment have given me opportunities for long-form conversation.

Behind the scenes, my expertise supports media productions and cultural institutions. Check the fine print and you’ll see that I’ve been an advisor and consultant to the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Obama Foundation, the National Women’s History Museum, and the U.S. Capital Historical Society. I have joined television and film productions, in front of and behind the camera for Netflix, Arte (France), and PBS American Experience.

At Johns Hopkins University, I teach for the department of history and the SNF Agora Institute. I also direct the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project where my lab investigates the history of slavery and racism connected with Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. Teaching takes me farther afield, reaching learners of many ages and stations thanks to organizations such as the National Constitution Center, the Pulitzer Center, the Zinn Education Project, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute, and the Institute for Constitutional History at New York Historical. I am indebted to my own teachers. At the CUNY School of Law, I was trained by mentors like Patricia Williams and Victor Goode, and at Columbia University I studied with Eric Foner, Manning Marable, and Alice Kessler-Harris.

My parents, a full decade before Loving v. Virginia, married despite the persistence of the color line. I was baptized in upper Manhattan’s Ascension Roman Catholic Church, took my first steps on the sidewalks of Harlem’s Riverton, and started school in the Long Island suburb of Port Washington. I eventually returned to New York City, a student at Hunter College and after law school as a store-front poverty lawyer battling for people facing homelessness, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS. A year as a Charles H. Revson Fellow on the Future of the City of New York let me see how I might mix social justice and academic research.

I live in Baltimore, Maryland, and Greenport, New York, with my husband, historian Jean Hébrard.

Graduate Seminars

AS.100.645 Race, Law, History
AS.100.713 Black Womanhood (with Professor Jessica Marie Johnson)
AS.100.738 Women, Genders and Sexualities

Undergraduate Courses

AS.100.375 Histories of Women and the Vote
AS.100.389 History of Law and Social Justice
AS.100.450 (01) History research Lab: Histories of Women and the Vote
AS.100.450 (03) History Research Lab: Discovering Hard Histories at Hopkins

 

Articles (selected)

Essays