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.