esse quam videri

For the Washington Post: “When Black Women Journalists Fight Back.”

When Black Women Journalists Fight Back

President Trump’s maligning of black women journalists set me back this week. I wanted to think hard about why, amidst all his sparring with the press, these attacks especially rankled me. History is, in part, the answer. The denigration of black women journalists, and at the White House at that, has a long history, one that trades on questions about their very right to be part of the body politic and the Fourth Estate.

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Review, For the Boston Review: Birthright Citizens by Robert Tsai

Review: The Origins of Birthright Citizenship

Robert Tsai of American University Law School reviewed Birthright Citizens for the Boston Review:

“Weaving together court records and contemporaneous newspaper accounts, Jones convincingly demonstrates that free black people laid claim to U.S. citizenship by behaving like citizens rather than waiting for others to confer that status upon them. They made contracts, sued people, testified against whites in court, sought relief from debts, worshipped more or less as they wished, and exercised their right to bear arms. “Well before any judicial or legislative consensus granted their rights,” she writes, “free black men and women seized them.” What Jones sketches is an approach to reshaping constitutional norms that depends neither on a favorable national consensus nor on piling up electoral victories. Antebellum blacks traded on cultural notions of respectability and proved they were leading lives deserving of respect and recognition.”

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Birthright Citizenship meets President Trump’s Threat of an Executive Order

The President revealed that he believe himself empowered to in some sense do away with birthright citizenship by way of a Executive Order. While he did not go very far toward revealing any details, of substance or timing, alarms rightly sounded. The history of citizenship battles that I chronicle in Birthright Citizens has been a useful context for making sense of the President’s threat. I spoke with NPR’s All Things Considered, Latino USA, and PRI’s The World. I wrote for The Atlantic and USA Today. And I appeared on Democracy Now! I’m clear that the 19th century case of African Americans is a precursor to what we’re witnessing today. As for what might unfold in the coming weeks and months, I don’t believe anyone can say for certain, unfortunately.

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With Michelle Obama: #IAmBecoming

I spent an afternoon with Michelle Obama and a very special book group, convened in anticipation of the release of her memoir, Becoming. It was an honor to be in such esteemed company of sister-writers of such excellence, and then to have a very frank and far-ranging conversation about a remarkable book.

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In the Washington Post: “Birthright Citizenship is a Powerful Weapon Against Racism. That’s Why We Must Protect It.”

Birthright Citizenship as a Powerful Weapon Against Racism:

It felt urgent this week to give people a reason to think beyond birthright citizenship as a historical question, to contemplate what it means for our own time. I’m convinced it is a bulwark against our recurrent bouts with racism, xenophobia, and other -isms that might otherwise arbitrate citizenship in the US. I’m interested to know what you think.

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In the New York Times: “The History Behind the Birthright Citizenship Battle.”

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

The History Behind the Birthright Citizenship Battle

The historian Martha S. Jones talks about how the 19th-century drive for African-American citizenship connects with today’s immigration debate.

The New York Times
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At Politics & Prose, talking Birthright Citizens with Lisa Crooms-Robinson.

Martha S. Jones and Lisa Crooms-Robinson

This past weekend I kicked off the publication of Birthright Citizens with Howard Law School’s Lisa Crooms-Robinson. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner; Lisa is both a scholar of citizenship and of human rights, and so her take on the book was unique and challenging. Big thanks to the folks at Politics & Prose for hosting us, and for all those who came out. You can watch our conversation here.

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From Ibram X. Kendi and the AAIHS: Birthright Citizens is a Recommended Summer Read!

#SummerReading: Recommended New Books on the Black Experience

 

With summer quickly approaching, I have compiled a list of recommended new non-fiction books. All of these books, which were published as early as February or will be published this summer, offer valuable insights on the Black experience in the United States and across the globe. Collectively, these books deepen our understanding of race and racism, and provide the necessary tools for antiracism work. The list is organized alphabetically.


Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Cambridge University Press, June 2018).

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the US Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law, secured allies, and conducted themselves like citizens, establishing their status through local, everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and an ambitious reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War, Jones shows how the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, and black Americans’ aspirations were realized. Birthright Citizens tells how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans.

 

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In the Washington Post: “Trump said protesting NFL players ‘shouldn’t be in this country.’ We should take him seriously.”

My latest for the Washington Post explain that threats that black Americans has a long and disreputable history.

“For nearly a century, between the American Revolution and the Civil War, former slaves and their descendants lived under a legal regime that made their claim to U.S. soil a political football. While only a few thousand gave in to the pressures applied by those who dreamed of a white-only America, thousands more felt the chilling effect, afraid to exercise the rights guaranteed to all citizens, including that of free expression.”

https://wapo.st/2xd9EJw?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.b1b42fec0f9f

 

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In the JHU Arts & Sciences Magazine: “Through a New Lens”

Here’s an exciting snapshot of African American History today at Johns Hopkins. “Through a New Lens” was a chance to talk about how Birthright Citizens fits into the larger field of African American history — 200 years after the first orators and pamphleteers told their stories.

“What comes next, I think, is that African-Americanist historians are going to be returning to some seemingly well-established subjects in U.S. history, and we are going look at them again,” she says. “You’ll frequently hear people in this field say insistently that ‘African-American history is U.S. history,’ but it also works in the other direction. There are many opportunities out there to come back to subjects that we think we know all about and look at them again through this lens of African-American history.”

Through a New Lens

 

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