Martha Jones

Professor Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. She is a legal and cultural historian whose work examines how black Americans have shaped the story of American democracy.

Professor Jones is the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All and Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, winner of the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award for the best book in civil rights history, among other awards. Professor Jones is also author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture 1830-1900 and a coeditor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, along with many important articles and essay.

Professor Jones is a public historian, frequently writing for broader audiences at the Washington Post, the Atlantic, USA Today, Public Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Time, the curatorship of museum exhibitions including “Reframing the Color Line” and “Proclaiming Emancipation.” Professor Jones holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and a J.D. from the CUNY School of Law.