Martha S. Jones | |
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Born | |
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Doctoral advisor | Eric Foner |
Academic work | |
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Institutions | |
Website | http://marthasjones.com/ |
Martha S. Jones is an American historian and legal scholar. She is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. She studies the legal and cultural history of the United States,with a particular focus on how Black Americans have shaped the history of American democracy. She has published books on the voting rights of African American women,the debates about women's rights among Black Americans in the early United States,and the development of birthright citizenship in the United States as promoted by African Americans in Baltimore before the Civil War.
Jones attended Hunter College,where she graduated with a BA degree in 1984. [1] She then attended the CUNY School of Law,earning a JD in 1987. [1]
From 1987 to 1994,Jones was a public interest lawyer with MFY Legal Services and the HIV Law Project. [1] In 1994,she was awarded a Charles H. Revson Fellowship on the Future of the City of New York at Columbia University. [1]
Jones then became a graduate student at Columbia University,and obtained an MA in history in 1997,an MPhil in history in 1998,and a PhD in history in 2001. [1] During her graduate studies,Jones was an adjunct lecturer at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School,and a visiting professor of history at Barnard College. In 2001,she joined the faculty of History and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan,where she was an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor from 2013 to 2017,and a Presidential Bicentennial Professor from 2016 to 2017. [2] From 2004 to 2017 she was also affiliated with the University of Michigan Law School.
In 2017,Jones joined the faculty at The Johns Hopkins University,becoming the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History. [1]
Jones has held visiting positions,including at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris,and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies,the National Humanities Center,Library Company of Philadelphia,and the National Constitution Center. [1] She is a distinguished lecturer of the Organization of American Historians. [3]
In 2018 Jones was elected a Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society. [1] In 2017,she became a co-president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, [4] and serves on the board of governors for the William L. Clements Library. [5]
In 2007,Jones published All Bound Up Together:The Woman Question in African American Public Culture,1830–1900. In it,she discusses the woman question in the debate over women's rights in African-American public culture during the early 1800s. [6] Jones presents evidence that contradicts the dominant narrative that the women's rights movement in America began with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848,instead showing that African-American women successfully contested the right to speak before a mixed-gender audience as early as the 1830s. [7] Jones also discusses the backlash against these activists,and the trajectory of the following generations of activists up to 1900. [6] She shows that the American Civil War provided black women the opportunity to expand their involvement in public service activities,such as teaching and charity work,and that despite the constraints of the Reconstruction era and Jim Crow laws,many black women were able to further their positions in social and religious institutions and thereby accrue public authority. [8]
Jones authored Birthright Citizens:A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. [9] The book relates how African-American activists transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans. Before the Civil War,colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African-American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures,conventions,and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition,most notoriously from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford . Yet no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law,secured allies,and conducted themselves like citizens,establishing their status through local,everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and a reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War,Jones shows how as the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle,black Americans' aspirations were realized. [10] Birthright Citizens was winner of the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award for the best book in civil rights history,the American Historical Association's Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in American legal history,and the American Society for Legal History John Phillip Reid book award for the best book in Anglo-American legal history.
In 2020,Jones published Vanguard:How Black Women Broke Barriers,Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All. [11] In the usual story,the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own. Jones offers a new history of African-American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot,and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond,Jones excavates the lives and work of black women who were the vanguard of women's rights. [12]
Jones also co-edited the 2015 volume Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. [1]
Jones is curator of museum exhibitions including "Reframing the Color Line" and "Proclaiming Emancipation" in conjunction with the William L. Clements Library.
The Declaration of Sentiments,also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments,is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men—100 out of some 300 attendees at the first women's rights convention to be organized by women. Held in Seneca Falls,New York,the convention is now known as the Seneca Falls Convention. The principal author of the Declaration was Elizabeth Cady Stanton,who modeled it upon the United States Declaration of Independence. She was a key organizer of the convention along with Lucretia Coffin Mott,and Martha Coffin Wright.
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex,in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage in the United States,at both the state and national levels,and was part of the worldwide movement towards women's suffrage and part of the wider women's rights movement. The first women's suffrage amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. However,a suffrage amendment did not pass the House of Representatives until May 21,1919,which was quickly followed by the Senate,on June 4,1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification,achieving the requisite 36 ratifications to secure adoption,and thereby go into effect,on August 18,1920. The Nineteenth Amendment's adoption was certified on August 26,1920.
The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history following the American Civil War,dominated by the legal,social,and political challenges of abolishing slavery and reintegrating the former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period,three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. Despite this,former Confederate states often used poll taxes,literacy tests,and intimidation to control people of color.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an American abolitionist,suffragist,poet,temperance activist,teacher,public speaker,and writer. Beginning in 1845,she was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause,which took effect in 1868,provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on legal issues,primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is often used synonymously with the kind of feminism espoused by the liberal women's rights movement with roots in the first wave,with organizations such as the International Alliance of Women and its affiliates. This feminist movement still focuses on equality from a mainly legal perspective.
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long,primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society –in its tactics,the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights,and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
United States citizenship can be acquired by birthright in two situations:by virtue of the person's birth within United States territory or because one or both of their parents was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person's birth. Birthright citizenship contrasts with citizenship acquired in other ways,for example by naturalization.
The Republic of Haiti is located on western portion of the island Hispaniola in the Caribbean. Haiti declared its independence from France in the aftermath of the first successful slave revolution in the Americas in 1804,and their identification as conquerors of a racially repressed society is a theme echoed throughout Haiti's history.
Black suffrage refers to black people's right to vote and has long been an issue in countries established under conditions of black minorities as well as,in some cases black majorities.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans,improve their educational and employment opportunities,and establish their electoral power,just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
African-American women began to agitate for political rights in the 1830s,creating the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society,Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society,and New York Female Anti-Slavery Society. These interracial groups were radical expressions of women's political ideals,and they led directly to voting rights activism before and after the Civil War. Throughout the 19th century,African-American women such as Harriet Forten Purvis,Mary Ann Shadd Cary,and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper worked on two fronts simultaneously:reminding African-American men and white women that Black women needed legal rights,especially the right to vote.
In the Netherlands,feminism began as part of the first-wave feminism movement during the 19th century. Later,the struggles of second-wave feminism in the Netherlands mirrored developments in the women's rights movement in other Western countries. Women in the Netherlands still have an open discussion about how to improve remaining imbalances and injustices they face as women.
The Second Emancipation Proclamation is the term applied to an envisioned executive order that Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement called on President John F. Kennedy to issue. As the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln to free all slaves being held in states at war with the Union,the envisioned "Second Emancipation Proclamation" was to use the powers of the executive office to strike a severe blow to segregation.
William H. Yates was an African-American abolitionist,writer,and the President of the first Convention of Colored Men. He focused his writing in the form of articles and editorials in newspapers;along with responses about books and articles written on slavery or civil rights.
Hezekiah Grice was an American and Haitian activist,machinist,and businessman,noted for his political activity in Baltimore during the early 19th century. While working as a machinist in Baltimore,he was either the first person or one of the first people to suggest holding a National Negro Convention to discuss the possibility of mass emigration by African Americans away from the United States. This was the beginning of the Colored Conventions Movement. Grice was also a leading figure in the founding of the Legal Rights Association,which has been credited with helping to clarify citizenship rights in America,as well as with pioneering several important tactics in American civil rights activism. He later moved to Haiti where he could secure full citizenship rights. There he became a prominent tradesman and a confidant of Faustin Soulouque.
African Americans were fully enfranchised in practice throughout the United States by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Prior to the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,some Black people in the United States had the right to vote,but this right was often abridged or taken away. After 1870,Black people were theoretically equal before the law,but in the period between the end of Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this was frequently infringed in practice.
Hester Lane was an American abolitionist,philanthropist,entrepreneur,and political activist. Born into slavery in Maryland,she settled down in New York as a free woman. Lane was known in New York for her approach to adding color pigment to walls using whitewash,freeing slaves in Maryland through purchasing them,and the controversy surrounding her failed nomination to the American Anti-Slavery Society. She died in July 1849 during the cholera pandemic.
Mary Jane Richardson Jones was an American abolitionist,philanthropist,and suffragist. Born in Tennessee to free African-American parents,Jones and her family moved to Illinois. With her husband,John,she was a leading African-American figure in the early history of Chicago. The Jones household was a stop on the Underground Railroad and a center of abolitionist activity in the pre-Civil War era,helping hundreds of fugitive slaves flee slavery.
Bolivian nationality law is regulated by the 2009 Constitution. This statute determines who is,or is eligible to be,a citizen of Bolivia. The legal means to acquire nationality and formal membership in a nation differ from the relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation,known as citizenship. Bolivian nationality is typically obtained either on the principle of jus soli,i.e. by birth in Bolivia;or under the rules of jus sanguinis,i.e. by birth abroad to at least one parent with Bolivian nationality. It can also be granted to a permanent resident who has lived in Bolivia for a given period of time through naturalization.
Jones, Martha S. (17 November 2022). "Belinda Sutton Distinguished Lecture: What's So Hard About Hard Histories?" (video). youtube.com. Harvard Law School.
Teaching With Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.