I am a historian, writer, and commentator who focuses on how black Americans have shaped the history of American democracy. This theme runs through my scholarship, commentary and creative projects.
My latest book is The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, coming from Basic Books in March 2025. My other books include a prize-winning history of African American women’s politics titled Vanguard: How Black Women Overcame Barrier, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, from Basic Books in 2020. In 2018, I published a new history of the early African American struggle for citizenship. Birthright Citizens examines how black Americans constructed their legal rights in a world predominated by the view that were non-citizens without rights. My first book, All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900, examined black debates about women’s rights, and was inspired by the women I’d met as a girl at Bennett College. I extended this work in 2015 with a co-edited volume, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women.
I was born in Central Harlem where my first playground was at the Riverton, the Black alternative to New York City’s Stuyvesant Town. By the time I was school age, we had moved to suburban Long Island where my family integrated a previously all-white enclave. My girlhood summers included stays with my paternal grandmother at her home on Bennett College’s campus in Greensboro, North Carolina. My early education prepared me for work as an activist lawyer. I received a B.A. from Hunter College in 1983 where I joined a diverse student body, worked alongside stellar researchers as a Psychology major, and discovered my passion for social justice with the city as my classroom. I earned my J.D. in 1987 from the CUNY School of Law, where our motto was “Law in the Service of Human Needs.” Among my teachers was Patricia Williams, whose work still influences me today. CUNY Law launched my career as a public interest lawyer. I worked out of community based law offices for nearly ten years, representing homeless people, people with mental illness, and women living with HIV and AIDS.
In 1994, I was awarded a Charles H. Revson Fellowship on the Future of the City of New York at Columbia University for my lawyering work. The direction of my career too a sharp but welcome turn. I was drawn to research and writing by Eric Foner and the late Manning Marable, whose own careers linked scholarship and social justice. I discovered my inner archive rat, learned the politics of history, and stayed at Columbia to earn a history Ph.D. in 2001. I spent the next 16 years teaching history, law, and African American studies at a the University of Michigan where I was a Presidential Bicentennial Professor and a founding director of the Michigan Law Program in Race, Law & History.
In 2017, I became the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. I am also a professor of the SNF Agora Institute and serve as director of Hard Histories at Hopkins. I have received broad support and recognition for my work from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Library of Congress, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Organization of American Historians, the American Society for Legal History, National Humanities Center, where I was the William C. and Ida Friday Fellow. I’ve also held fellowships from the Columbia University Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the National Constitution Center, the American Historical Association, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. In 2010 I was selected as a Distinguished Lecturer with the Organization of Americans Historians. I am an elected member of the Society of American Historians and fellow of the American Antiquarian Society. In 2019, I was awarded a Doctors of Law, honoris causa, from my alma mater, CUNY School of Law, in 2021 I received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement from the Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement, and in 2024 I was elected to the Hunter College Hall of Fame.
I live in Baltimore, Maryland with my husband, historian Jean Hébrard. During the summer, we return to Long Island and a 19th century oysterman’s house. My greatest pleasures are friends and family. We are far-flung, living across the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, and Brazil. In a life often spent on the road, no journey is sweeter than that which ends sharing a meal and long conversation with those I love.
And if you’re looking for the other Martha Jones, the character from Dr. Who, you can find her here!