Martha S. Jones is a distinguished writer, historian, legal scholar, and public intellectual deeply engaged with the politics, culture, and poetics of Black America. Her multifaceted career spans academia, public speaking, and writing for diverse audiences across books, newspapers, Substack (Hard Histories JHU), and social media platforms. Professor Jones finds intellectual nourishment and inspiration in archives and museum galleries, constantly seeking discovery and engaging with art that challenges and enriches her perspectives.

Her creative foundation rests upon the personal essay, culminating in her forthcoming book, The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (2025). This highly anticipated memoir explores her personal journey through race and color, tracing generations of her ancestors. Readers will recognize her meticulous historian’s approach interwoven with her deeply personal reflections on inheriting the complexities of the color line, from the historical burdens of slavery and sexual violence to the nuances of passing and colorism. Her essays, which have appeared in esteemed venues such as CNN, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Claudia Rankine’s Racial Imaginary Institute, have paved the way for the comprehensive narrative in The Trouble of Color.

Professor Martha S. Jones is celebrated for her prize-winning historical scholarship that examines vast epochs of American history. Her works delve into foundational issues from slavery and the nation’s founding to the Civil War and Reconstruction, the women’s suffrage movement, the Jim Crow era, and the modern Civil Rights movement, extending to contemporary issues of race and identity. Her acclaimed 2020 book, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, meticulously chronicles the protracted struggle for voting rights, highlighting the pivotal roles of Black women from early preachers to figures like Kamala Harris. In Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018), she offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of U.S. citizenship as actively shaped by Black American activism and resilience. Grounded in women’s history and Black feminist theory, her foundational works include the edited volume 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), establishing her as a leading voice in these fields.

Her impactful scholarship has garnered extensive recognition, including prestigious book prizes from the Los Angeles Times, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Society for Legal History. In Fall 2024, ASLH honored her with honorary fellow status, its highest accolade. Her alma maters have also bestowed significant honors: an honorary Doctor of Laws from the CUNY School of Law (2019), the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement from Columbia University (2021), and induction into the Hunter College Hall of Fame (2024). Professor Jones has also held fellowships at distinguished institutions such as the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Humanities Center. She is an elected member of esteemed societies including the American Antiquarian Society, the Society of American Historians, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 2023, President Joe Biden appointed her to the Permanent Committee on the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise, further cementing her influence in legal and historical scholarship.

Professor Jones’ insights regularly appear in prominent media outlets. She has contributed to the New York Times on culture and travel, notably with “Enslaved to A Founding Father, She Sought Freedom in France,” recounting the story of Abigail, an enslaved woman connected to John Jay’s family. Her thought-provoking opinion columns have been featured in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Politico, Talking Points Memo, and USA Today. She is also a frequent commentator on public radio and television, appearing on NPR’s Here & Now and 1A, CNN’s Amanpour, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. Long-form conversations and in-depth interviews can be found on podcasts such as the Ezra Klein Show and Amendment by The 19th* (https://19thnews.org/2024/11/errin-haines-the-amendment-podcast-martha-s-jones/).

Behind the scenes, Dr. Jones’ expertise informs the work of major media productions and cultural institutions. She has served as 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. Capitol Historical Society. Her involvement extends to television and film, both on and off-camera, with collaborations including Netflix, Arte (France), and PBS American Experience.

At Johns Hopkins University, Martha S. Jones is a dedicated professor in the Department of History and the SNF Agora Institute. She also leads the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project, a crucial initiative exploring the history of slavery and racism intertwined with Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. Her commitment to education extends beyond university walls through partnerships with organizations like 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. She acknowledges the profound influence of her mentors at the CUNY School of Law, including Patricia Williams and Victor Goode, and at Columbia University, Eric Foner, Manning Marable, and Alice Kessler-Harris.

Professor Jones’ personal history is deeply intertwined with the themes she explores in her scholarship. Born to parents who married across the color line a decade before Loving v. Virginia, her early life spanned diverse urban and suburban environments, from upper Manhattan and Harlem to Long Island. Returning to New York City, she attended Hunter College and later practiced as a poverty lawyer, advocating for individuals facing homelessness, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS. A Charles H. Revson Fellowship on the Future of the City of New York provided a turning point, enabling her to integrate social justice work with academic inquiry.

Currently, Martha S. Jones resides in Baltimore, Maryland, and Greenport, New York, with her 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

Selected Articles by Martha S. Jones

“Forgetting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the United States: How History Troubled Memory in 2008.” Distant Ripples of the British Abolitionist Wave: Africa, Asia, and the Americas, eds. Myriam Cottias and Marie Jeanne Rossignol (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press Tubman Institute Series, 2017.)

“Birthright Citizenship and Reconstruction’s Unfinished Revolution,” Journal of the Civil War Era, in Forum: The Future of Reconstruction Studies, Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 1 (March 2017): 10.

“First the Streets, Then the Archives,” American Journal of Legal History 56, no. 1 (March 2016): 92-96.

“Marin et citoyen : être noir et libre à bord des navires états-uniens avant la Guerre civile.” Le movement social, 3 (2015): 93-112.

“Histories, Fictions, and Black Womanhood Bodies: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.” Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, eds. Mia Bay, Farah Griffin, Martha S. Jones and Barbara D. Savage (University of North Carolina Press, 2015.)

“History and Commemoration: The Emancipation Proclamation at 150.” Journal of the Civil War Era, 3, no. 4 (December 2013): 452-457.

“Emancipation’s Encounters: Seeing the Proclamation Through Soldiers’ Sketchbooks.” Journal of the Civil War Era, 3, no. 4 (December 2013): 533 548.

“Hughes v. Jackson: Race and Rights Beyond Dred Scott.” 91, no. 5 North Carolina Law Review (June 2013): 1757-1783.

“The Case of Jean Baptiste, un Créole de Saint-Domingue: Narrating Slavery, Freedom, and the Haitian Revolution in Baltimore City.” Chapter 5 in The American South and the Atlantic World eds. Brian Ward, Martin Bone, and William A. Link (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013): 104-128.

“Historians’ Forum: The Emancipation Proclamation.” (with Kate Masur, Louis Masur, James Oakes, and Manisha Sinha.) 59, no. 1 Civil War History (March 2013.)

“Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York.” Law and History Review 29, no 4 (November 2011): 1031-1060.

“Overthrowing the ‘Monopoly of the Pulpit’: Race and the Rights of Churchwomen in Nineteenth Century America.” No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism, ed. Nancy Hewitt (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.)

“Leave of Court: African-American Legal Claims Making In the Era of Dred Scott v. Sandford.” Contested Democracy: Politics, Ideology and Race in American History, eds. Manisha Sinha and Penny Von Eschen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.)

“Make us a Power”: African-American Methodists Debate the Rights of Women, 1870-1900.” Women and Religion in the African Diaspora, eds. R. Marie Griffith and Barbara D. Savage. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

“Perspectives on Teaching Women’s History: Views from the Classroom, the Library, and the Internet,” Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 143-176.

Selected Essays by Martha S. Jones

“Before Frederick Douglass: William Watkins Speaks for Black Americans on Independence Day. July4, 1831.” Medium. July 4, 2017.

“Are There New Lives for Old Objects at the National Museum of African American History and Culture?” Muster: The Blog of the Journal of the Civil War Era. October 11, 2016.

“Thurgood Marshall and His Hometown Courthouse.” We’re History. July 11, 2016.

“We Are the Intellectuals.” Roundtable: Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women.” African-American Intellectual History Society Blog. June 5, 2015.

“On The Cherokee Rose, Historical Fiction, and Silences in the Archives.” Process: The Blog of the Organization of American Historians. May 26, 2015.

“History, Myth and the Emancipation Proclamation.” Proclaiming Emancipation: The Exhibition Catalogue (Ann Arbor, MI: The William L. Clements Library, 2013.)

“A Bellwether: Phil Lapsansky at the Library Company of Philadelphia.” Phil Lapsansky: Appreciations (Philadelphia, PA: Library Company of Philadelphia, 2012): 84-88.

“Edward Clay’s Life in Philadelphia.” An Americana Sampler: Essays on Selections from the William L. Clements Library, eds. Brian Leigh Dunnigan and J. Kevin Graffagnino (Ann Arbor, MI: The William L. Clements Library, 2011).

“Reflections of an Archive Rat.” (Ann Arbor, MI: The William L. Clements Library, 2009.)

“Reframing the Color Line.” Reframing the Color Line: The Exhibition Catalog (Ann Arbor, MI: The William L. Clements Library, 2009.)

“Learning a Pedagogy of Love: Thomas Merton.” Living Legacies at Columbia, ed, Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.)

“Mining Our Collective Memory: Beyond the Academic-Activist Divide in Black Studies,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. 6, no. 3/4 (October 2004): 71-76.