I am a writer, historian, legal scholar and public intellectual whose work aims to understanding the politics, culture, and poetics of Black America. You can find me at work in seminar rooms, at podiums, in front of microphones, and on the pages of books, newspapers, Substack, and social media. My happy place is the archives where I never tire of the adventure of discovery. When I’m looking for sustenance, you can find me in museum galleries where artists, by way of beauty and provocation, enrich my ideas and nourish my spirit.

My creative practice is rooted in the personal essay. My latest book – The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (2025) – recounts my family’s encounters with race and color through the story of five generations. You’ll recognize signs of my historian’s research skills, but you will also discover how I have felt about inheriting the troubles of the jagged color line – from slavery and sexual violence through passing and colorism and on through civil rights and today’s “mixed-race” generation. I am grateful to venues from CNN to the Michigan Quarterly Review and Claudia Rankine’s Racial Imaginary Institute for nurturing the stories that have taken full form in The Trouble of Color.

I am the author of prize-winning histories that survey the vast American past, from slavery and the founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, women’s suffrage and Jim Crow, on through modern Civil Rights and present day race and identity. My 2020 book, Vanguard chronicled a long struggle for the ballot that extended from the first Black women preachers on through the candidacy of Kamala Harris. Birthright Citizens (2018) told a new history of citizenship in the U.S. as the product of Black American activism, legal claims-making, and persistence. My work is often grounded in women’s history, and my first two books – the co-edited 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) – are that foundation. 

Expect to encounter my byline from time to time. For the New York Times I have written on culture and travel, including the widely-read “Enslaved to A Founding Father, She Sought Freedom in France” about Abigail, a woman held by the family of John Jay. My opinion columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Politico, Talking Points Memo, and USA Today. You can also hear or see me via outlets such as NPR’s Here & Now and 1A, CNN’s Amanpour, and MSNBC’s the Rachel Maddow Show. Podcasts such as the Ezra Klein Show and the 19th*’s Amendment have given me opportunities for long-form conversation.

My work has enjoyed generous recognition. Book prizes from the American Historical Association, the Organization for American History, the American Society for Legal History, and the Los Angeles Times have helped to bring my writing to even broader audiences. My research has been supported by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advance Study,) the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Library of Congress Kluge Center, and the American Historical Association. I am an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Society of American Historians, and the American Society for Legal History which in 2024 named me an honorary fellow, the society’s highest distinction.

Behind the scenes, my expertise supports media productions and cultural institutions. Check the credits and you’ll see that I’ve been 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. Capital Historical Society. I have joined television and film productions, in front of and behind the camera for Netflix, Arte (France), and PBS American Experience. 

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. Teaching takes me farther afield, engaging with learners of many ages and stations thanks to organizations such as 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. I am indebted to the educators in my own family, and my teachers. At the CUNY School of Law, I was trained by mentors such as Patricia Williams and Victor Goode, and at Columbia University I studied under Eric Foner, the late Manning Marable, and Alice Kessler-Harris.

My parents, a full decade before Loving v. Virginia, married despite the threat of the color line. I was baptized in upper Manhattan’s Ascension Roman Catholic Church, took my first steps on the sidewalks of  Harlem’s Riverton, and started school in the Long Island suburb of Port Washington. I eventually returned to New York City, a student at Hunter College and, after law school as a store-front poverty lawyer battling for people facing homelessness, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS. A year as a Charles H. Revson Fellow on the Future of the City of New York let me see how I might mix social justice and academic research. That has been my purpose ever since.

Along with my husband, historian Jean Hébrard, I live in Baltimore, Maryland, and Greenport, New York. If you’re looking for the other Martha Jones, the Dr. Who character, you can find her here.