Martha S. Jones - "The Trouble of Color" - Leslie M. Harris

An "intimate and searching" (Natasha Trethewey, New York Times-bestselling author of Memorial Drive) memoir of family, color, and being Black, white, and other in America, from "one of our country's greatest historians" (Clint Smith, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How the Word is Passed).

Martha S. Jones will discuss The Problem of Color: An American Family Memoir. She will joined in conversation by Leslie M. Harris. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op

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About the Book

Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones's right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: "Who do you think you are?"

Now a prizewinning scholar of Black history, Jones delves into her family's past for answers. In every generation since her great-great-great-grandmother survived enslavement to raise a free family, color determined her ancestors' lives. But the color line was shifting and jagged, not fixed and straight. Some backed away from it, others skipped along it, and others still were cut deep by its sharp teeth.

Journeying across centuries, from rural Kentucky and small-town North Carolina to New York City and its suburbs, The Trouble of Color is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.

About the Author

I am a writer, historian, and legal scholar who also teaches at the Johns Hopkins University. I am the prize-winning author of several books. My latest is The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir. This is a personal look back across six generations to understand how color -- from slavery and sexual violence to antimiscegenation laws, passing, and colorism have shaped who we are and who we call kin. My past books include Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020), Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018), All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture (2007), and Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015).

About the Interlocutor

Leslie Harris (Ph.D., Stanford, 1995) has focused on complicating the ideas we all hold about the history of African Americans in the United States; and finding ways to communicate these new ideas to the general public. Her first body of work on New York City challenged the prevailing view of slavery as a phenomenon of the southern United States, with little impact or importance in the north. In her first book, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (University of Chicago, 2003), she examines the impact of northern and southern slavery on the definitions of class, gender, citizenship and political activism promulgated by New York’s blacks and whites. That work led to her participation in the New-York Historical Society’s groundbreaking exhibition Slavery in New York (2005-2006), for which she was a principal advisor as well as co-editor, with Ira Berlin, of the accompanying book.