Author Archives: msjonz

My friend, historian Emily Clark, posted this image of Johnnetta Cole’s Bennett College inauguration robe during her visit to the NMAAHC. I was moved because I was at Bennett College when I saw the post, getting ready to deliver the … Continue reading →

I’m reading L.D. Burnett, from her recent paper at the USIH meeting. I most often encounter her via a quick quip on Facebook or Twitter. So I was all the more moved to find her here, in long form, thinking out … Continue reading →

The Mixed Experience is hosted by novelist and activist Heidi Durrow. I joined Heidi, along with colleagues Karen Downing, Mark Kamimura, and Ed West, to talk about multiracial identity at the University of Michigan, and beyond. Listen in here.

I joined GWU Law’s Chris Bracey and C-SPAN’s Susan Swain for an episode of C-SPAN’s Landmark Cases on Dred Scott v. Sandford. The show runs 90 minutes, but you can also find highlight here.  

When the New York Times termed the late Julian Bond’s great-grandmother, Jane Bond, a “slave mistress,” social media fired back, enumerating all the ways in which this phrase mis-characterized the terms of a sexual exchange between an enslaved woman and … Continue reading →

No question posed here spoke to me more than that asked by Kientz Anderson in her Introduction to this roundtable: “Who are intellectuals?” This question was that which guided our work from the outset. I hope it isn’t revealing too much … Continue reading →

The Cherokee Rose, the debut novel by historian Tiya Miles, caught me in the middle of a longstanding argument. I had pre-ordered the book from its publisher John F. Blair, and so it arrived unexpectedly, as if unsummoned. It was … Continue reading →

On the steps of the city courthouse, a monument to equality and the rule of law, Baltimore residents have learned how dreams can be brutally deferred. There, the property of the city’s poor and working families has been, by order … Continue reading →

Glimpse a preview of dynamics that will shape the 2016 election cycle in the contest over Loretta Lynch’s nomination as Attorney General. As the first African American woman slated to occupy that office, Lynch signals a degree to which race … Continue reading →

Nearly 90 years old, Black History Month now attracts critics who say that the observance is either an inadequate gesture or a throwback to another time. In this piece, I suggest that Black History Month continues to have relevance, especially … Continue reading →