Martha Jones

I am a writer, historian, legal scholar and public intellectual whose work is devoted to understanding the politics, culture, and poetics of Black America. 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.

My books include The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (2025); Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020); Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018); All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture 1830-1900 (2007); and am a coeditor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015), together with many articles, reviews, and essays.