CBH Talk | Martha Jones and Nikole Hannah-Jones Discuss “The Trouble of Color”
Prize-winning historian Martha Jones has authored books about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, women’s suffrage, Jim Crow, and the modern Civil Rights Movement. But her newest work, The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, is altogether different. A deeply personal meditation on the jagged color line of five generations of Jones’ family, The Trouble of Color delves into the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and race.
Jones applies her historian’s detective skills to dig through archives, excavate clues, and trace genealogy weaving together a family history of enslavement, sexual violence, passing, and colorism. Pulitzer and MacArthur Prize-winner Nikole Hannah-Jones leads a conversation that will resonate with all who care about being Black, white, and other in America.
I am tethered to the generations before me by ambiguous and even unspoken beginnings—expressed in skin too light, features too fine, hair too limp. I am the heir of misunderstanding, misapprehension, and mistaken identity. Who do I think I am? To begin, I am a daughter of Nancy.
Martha Jones, "The Trouble of Color"
This program is presented in connection with the exhibition "Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn."
Participants
Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history, and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. A prizewinning author and editor of four books, most recently Vanguard, and nowThe Color of Trouble, she is past co-president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and has contributed to the New York Times, Atlantic, and many other publications. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. The book version of The 1619 Project as well as the 1619 Project children's book, Born on the Water, were instant #1 New York Times bestsellers. Her 1619 Project is now a six-part docuseries on Hulu and won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
Hannah-Jones has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times.
She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy. Hannah-Jones is also the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of investigative reporters and editors of color, and in 2022 she opened the 1619 Freedom School, a free afterschool literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. Hannah-Jones holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her Bachelor of Arts in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Hannah-Jones photo by Regina Fleming
