Martha S. Jones

David Myers and the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy offered me a unique opportunity to reflect out loud on writing history in troubled time with an invitation to the “Historians and Society” series. I took the occasion to explore my own concerns and conflicts about being a historian of citizenship in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. I very grateful to my UCLA colleagues who listened with care and then responded with compassion and important questions. You can watch here.

At Rutgers Law, I was reunited with my friend Elise Boddie, at the invitation of Professor Rose Cuison Villazor, who directs the Rutgers-Newark Law School Center for Immigration Law, Policy and Justice. Special thanks to Dean David Lopez and Chancellor Nancy Cantor for coming out!

I was honored when Dean Josh Sharfstein invited me to speak with the public health community about my research on birthright citizenship. I wasn’t sure that I knew quite what to say, but a great audience helped create a strong 60 minutes of thinking about birthright, past and present.

Among a small cadres of black women historians whose work paved the way for my own was Dr. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. Her pioneering work on black women in the women’s suffrage movement is a text to which I still return and teach every chance I get. Dr. Terborg-Penn sadly passed away in December 2018, just after so many of us had enjoyed her insight and wit during the 40th anniversary meeting of the Association of Black Women Historians, an organization she had helped to found. I was grateful for the chance to pay a small trip to her here in the New York Times. RIP.

High praise for Birthright Citizens: “If you want to understand the debates that are tearing our country apart right now, you must start here.”

Eleven Books That Got Us Through 2018

Karin Wulf singles out Birthright Citizens: “I read some really wonderful books this year, and added a huge number to my “must read” pile. Among the very best, and one I’m urging family and friends as well as colleagues to read, is Birthright Citizens:  A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America . Birthright Citizens takes up an issue with clear contemporary resonance.  How does anyone, born in the United States or born abroad, become a citizen, and what rights are conferred by, let alone guaranteed by citizenship?”

Chefs’ Selections: The Best Books Read During 2018 Part 2

This one came straight from the heart, in a way that was only possible after talking personally with Mrs. Obama. I continue to wrestle with my so-called mixed-race family history and identity, but after reading her memoir, Becoming, I was able to tell her how moved I was by her embrace of people like me. And then I wrote about it for Public Books.

Michelle Obama’s Embrace

This afternoon we joined his family and friends to say goodbye to a beloved colleague and friend, Ira Berlin. His scholarship is legend in the field of slavery. And I am especially indebted to Ira for his interest in Birthright Citizens. He was the first to comment on an early article with a characteristic “You’re onto something!” And his field defining Slaves Without Masters was the counterpart always simmering under my prose. My best memories of Ira and his beloved wife Martha are of time we spent together in France. In Paris, where we spent a long night hearing the sounds of Nantes’ Fete de la Musique, and shoe shopping along the rue Cherche Midi for shoes. The memorial at the National Museum of African American History and Culture was a fitting tribute, and featured the moving sounds of the University of Maryland Gospel Choir. RIP, dear Ira.