>> John Haskell: Welcome to Conversations on the Future of Democracy, a series sponsored by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. I'm John Haskell, director of the Kluge Center. Today, we are discussing with Dr. Martha Jones her recent book, Vanguard, How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Dr. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. She's a legal and cultural historian whose work examines how black Americans have shaped the story of American democracy. In 2018, she wrote Birthright Citizens, a History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. And was winner of the Organization of American Historians award for best book in civil rights history. The American Historical Association prize for best book in American legal history. And the American Society for Legal History award for best book in Anglo American legal history. Martha, welcome. >> Martha Jones: Thank you very much for having me. >> John Haskell: So, um, for those of us, uh, uh, those of our viewers who don't know too much about you, tell us about who you are as a scholar. >> Martha Jones: That's a big question. >> John Haskell: It gives you an open-ended way to answer. >> Martha Jones: Yeah. I, um, I'm somebody who, um, came to, uh, scholarship and the writing of history, uh, relatively late in her career. Um, I had a first life as a public interest lawyer in New York City. And, um, one way for me to think about the arc of that journey, um, is to appreciate the many ways in which we come to work on and commit ourselves to the work of not only historical thinking. But the bigger project of American democracy. And I think I did that as a lawyer, and though my days are very different, um, classrooms versus courtrooms, um, I think of my work as very much still in that spirit. >> John Haskell: What inspired you to write Vanguard? Um, as I understand it, the book has a personal element for you. >> Martha Jones: It does. Um, Vanguard was written, um, on the one hand, to intervene, um, be a part of the celebrations and conversations that were going to be generated by the celebration of 100 years of the 19th Amendment. One hundred years of women's suffrage in the United States. I wanted to be sure that black American women were, um, centrally a part of that conversation in 2020. Um, but along the way, as you allude to, um, I took a sort of detour, uh, one I never told my editor about until it was all over. But, um, I became very curious, um, more than curious. I became preoccupied with the question about the women in my own family and how they fit in to this story. Um, and they - it turns out, they had a lot to teach me. Um, I found my, uh, great grandmother in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920, um, a member of an African American women's YWCA, um, where she helped to organize the suffrage school. Um, helping black women to overcome the Jim Crow barriers that might have otherwise kept them away from the polls in 1920. And later on, I find my own grandmother now in the modern civil rights era in the '50s and '60s, um, part of the grassroots efforts of that generation, um, to press for African American voting rights. And it's really a lesson in what happens when you center black women in this story. Um, you can't end in 1920 at all. You have to come all the way up through, um, for example, the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. >> John Haskell: What - where was your grandmother in the '50s and '60s and what did she do? >> Martha Jones: Um, she lived in, um, a central North Carolina city, Greensboro. Um, a city that I think some folks will remember, um, from the role that students there played in the sit-in movement, um, during the modern civil rights era. Um, she came to Greensboro in the 1920s with my grandfather who was president of a historically black college in Greensboro, Bennett College. Um -- >> John Haskell: Right. >> Martha Jones: -- which is still there today. Um, so by the '50s and '60s, uh, my grandmother is supporting now a young generation of Bennett students, young, black women who are, um, taking to the streets. And to the black communities in Greensboro to get residents there registered and to the polls. >> John Haskell: Yeah, and, uh, of course, it got a lot of attention. Uh, Jesse Jackson was involved, at some level. Um, what of the celebration? You referred to the celebration, the centennial celebration of the passage of the 19th Amendment. What did that mean to you both as a legal and cultural historian, but also as a person, as an African American person? >> Martha Jones: I'm somebody who, after researching this book, um, really realized I couldn't quite celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Um, I recognized that it was a milestone in the long story of American voting rights. Um, but as my research and the research of many others, um, has demonstrated, too many African American women remain disenfranchised after the 19th Amendment is ratified. Um, that disenfranchisement is not accidental, not unanticipated, but it is, in a sense, part of the design of the 19th Amendment. The possibility of ratification of that amendment rested upon the unmitigated, um, extension of Jim Crow strictures like poll taxes and literacy tests now that had long kept black men from the polls. Now are going to keep black women from the polls. That's not for me, um, a historical milestone in the celebration sense. Um, but it is an important story in the longer road, um, that African Americans travel, um, to get to voting rights. >> John Haskell: I mean, just to be clear, it wasn't the case that the passage of an amendment made any difference then if the literacy test was going to deny somebody the vote or some other means, like you said, a poll tax. And principally in the Southern states, but other places, too. >> Martha Jones: When we dive into the archival record, um, that's not a secret, right? >> John Haskell: Yeah. >> Martha Jones: That is a moving, um, facet of the debates, um, of the consideration and more that get us to ratification of the amendment. >> John Haskell: When you look at your book, uh, what you see are a lot of untold stories. But in perhaps in the category of the least told of the untold stories were the work of black women at the vanguard of the effort to achieve suffrage all the way back into the 1800s. Can you speak to a couple of those stories? >> Martha Jones: This is a book that kept pulling me farther and farther into the past. And the reason was that, um, I really wanted to understand, um, yes, black women's activism, but I also wanted to understand their thinking. I wanted to understand how black women had developed a political philosophy, um, a vision of American democracy that rejected both racism and sexism, um, in their lives. But really, for all Americans. And when I began to pull on that thread, as you say, I find myself in the first decades of the 19th century, in the 1820s and '30s. Um, where some remarkable women like Jarena Lee, a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, maybe not the place you'd expect a woman, a book about women's votes, to begin. But indeed, Lee is one of the architects, the early architects of a political philosophy that African American women carry, um, with them. And, uh, work through, and at least, uh, hold up for the nation to, um, emulate. Um, so these are not women who, um, yet have the opportunity to, um, intervene in party politics, or run for office, or can imagine yet casting ballots. Uh, but Jarena Lee, like someone like Maria Miller Stewart. Um, who is the first American woman, as best we know, of any color, um, to speak about politics from a podium, which she does from - in Boston in the 1830s. Um, Stewart is somebody else who speaks in what today we would call intersectional terms about the twin scourge of racism and sexism. And after a very brief and fiery career, um, at the podium, finds herself, in essence, run out of Boston, um, for her, um, political heresy. >> John Haskell: And as you move in time, the, uh, with the abolition movement, as in the abolition of slavery. Uh, there was a real tension, wasn't there, between the effort to free slaves and, uh, and thinking about women's suffrage? I mean, some abolitionists were in favor of women's suffrage, right? >> Martha Jones: Absolutely. Um, one of the origins for, um, women's rights, and ultimately, the movement for women's votes, is in, um, that critique that is already being leveled at slavery. Um, racism, like sexism, are manmade differences, um, that are arbitrary, um, and should not be countenanced. Um, that critique is, um, uh, American women can see themselves in the critique of slavery. Um, and African American women, indeed, can see themselves in that critique, um, alongside white women. And for a brief time, in the 1830s, um, they are really partners in, um, now challenging the kinds of political strictures that would lead women to the margins of antislavery politics. >> John Haskell: What about Ida B. Wells? She's, I guess, probably the best known, uh, African American woman who's associated with the 19th Amendment. >> Martha Jones: Yeah. >> John Haskell: Um, what's your story on her? >> Martha Jones: Yeah. Um, Wells is, um, there have been many wonderful biographies of Wells, and so fortunately, um, I didn't have to give her as much space, in a sense, as she deserves, as you say. Um, but Wells is, um, you know, a child of enslavement, um, a native of Tennessee. A journalist run out of, um, Memphis when she challenges, um, with her, um, uh, unparalleled and fiery pen, um, the scourge of lynching, um, in the late-19th century. Um, she'll relocate to Chicago where she will continue to be, um, an international spokesperson, an advocate of anti-lynching legislation. But will, as you suggest, add women's political power and women's suffrage to her agendas. Um, Wells will found suffrage associations, um, important ones, in the city of Chicago. And here we have to remember that women in Illinois are going to win the vote in 1913, even before the 19th Amendment, um, has been ratified. And so Wells is deeply, um, entrenched in women's politics, Republican Party politics, by the early-20th century. Um, and she's someone who is going to, um, importantly, uh, challenge, um, reject, and work against, um, the anti-black racism. That too often is, um, in the early-20th century, contaminating the suffrage movement. Wells is really someone who, um, stands up to that. >> John Haskell: You spend time in the book talking about how, uh, suffrage was - I'm a - I'm going to be careful about my language. Maybe, uh, simpler may not be the - quite the right word. But the achievement of some level of political equality was a fairly direct line for white women. Whereas, you know, you get the right to vote and you're further along, a lot further along than black women would be. Um, and maybe that's still the case. Uh, develop that point for us, because you speak to that in the book. >> Martha Jones: Black women, um, for a long time, historians have puzzled over, um, have puzzled over why African American women weren't more present in the major suffrage associations. Particularly in those years leading up to the 19th Amendment. And the mistaken assumption was that black women weren't concerned with those issues. Um, so, uh, part of the strategy in this book was rather than look for black women where they should be, um, I tried to find them where they actually were. And one example of that is the founding in 1896 of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. And here, um, black women choose not to invest heavily in the national suffrage associations and create an organization in which they can do the important work of anti-racism. Including, um, the struggle for anti-lynching legislation at the same time that they can engage in women's politics, i.e. the struggle for the vote. Um, so for black women, it's important both philosophically, but, um, organizationally, um, to build spaces in which they can work on these two, um, parallel scourges simultaneously. Why? Um, because as the story of the 19th Amendment reveals to us, that even a federal amendment that looks to support and even guaranty women's votes. Um, can be quite easily, unfortunately, abrogated in the early-20th century by state laws that aim themselves at black Americans animated by anti-black racism. So black women understand that there is no, um, out for them in a politics that is simply women's politics or a politics that is simply, um, anti-racism politics. Um, they really need to create the spaces, and the organizations, and the ideas, um, that permit them to work, um, on both issues simultaneously. >> John Haskell: Yeah, because we had lynching. I mean, the larger picture of Jim Crow, which weren't issues of direct relevance to the lives of white women in the same way, certainly. Um, I'm particularly fascinated by, uh, Fannie Lou Hamer's role, uh, and, uh, I was wondering how you think of her going down in history. >> Martha Jones: Hm. >> John Haskell: Tell us a little bit about her, first, but also, you know, how you think she goes down in history. >> Martha Jones: So Fannie Lou, now we're, um, in the modern civil rights era. >> John Haskell: Right. >> Martha Jones: Fannie Lou Hamer, um, a native of Mississippi, one-time sharecropper turned voting rights organizer, um, working through the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. Um, Mrs. Hamer is on the very, very rough, the dangerous front lines of voting rights in the state of Mississippi. And pays an extraordinary personal price both with her health and well-being, as well as her livelihood, for championing the voting rights of black Mississippians. Um, but she's someone, um, importantly in my story, who (a) understands the power of the image, the camera, particularly the moving camera, in its capacity, television, right. To bring, um, African American struggles over voting rights into the homes of many Americans, millions of them, far from the state of Mississippi. Um, so she is a master, um, at this, um, technology. Um, and, um, she also is an extraordinary strategist. And so Hamer will help to found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic, uh, Party, which in 1964, um, will head to the Democratic National Convention that summer. Um, Lyndon Johnson is about to be, um, nominated, um, as the Democrat's candidate. But Hamer is there to decry the party for having seated a Mississippi delegation made simply of white Mississippians who have not been vetted and certainly not approved by African Americans in that state. And I urge folks on your YouTube, um, or wherever you get your videos. To, um, look at the eight-plus minutes, um, of Mrs. Hamer's testimony before the credentials committee at the Democratic convention in 1964. To understand, um, her skill, her craft, um, but her message, right, which is that, um, there will be no peace for the Democratic Party. There will be no peace for Lyndon Johnson's campaign if voting rights for black Americans does not surface as a, um, unavoidable and absolutely necessary facet of the platform. Um, and this is how Hamer holds the feet of the party, holds the feet of Lyndon Johnson to the fire of African American voting rights. And as we know, um, by the spring of 1965, the Voting Rights Act will be signed into law. >> John Haskell: You know, and, uh, many historians and political scientists, in retrospect, see this and Fannie Lou Hamer was at the forefront of it as seeing that as a turning point in our parties. I mean, the Democratic and Republican parties stemming from that point, not coincidentally involving Fannie Lou Hamer and the race question in Mississippi, have gone different directions. Uh, I don't know if you're one of those historians that thinks of it that way. But it is - it's that's how consequential I think those - watching those eight minutes can be for somebody who wasn't, for example, born by that point. >> Martha Jones: Absolutely, and I think that, um, the other thing that's important and instructive I think about Mrs. Hamer's work is that she, um, is an organizer and she's prepared to play party politics, right? She is someone working at the grassroots who also knows how to show up at a major political convention and command, um, the attention, um, of the nation, not only of the convention. And so it is this versatility, I think, that is also profoundly instructive and it - we don't have to look far in our own past to recognize that that kind of political versatility that she really helped to author. Um, continues to be a signature dimension of black women's politics even today. >> John Haskell: And it's an African American dominated party in Mississippi now, um, and it wouldn't have been had not been for people like her, particularly her leadership, I think. >> Martha Jones: Yes. >> John Haskell: But what other stories? I mean, I've raised a few people specifically. What other stories would you like to for people to know about from your book? >> Martha Jones: Well, there's one figure, um, I've been thinking a lot about, um, uh, and this is, uh, Mary McLeod Bethune from Florida. Um, Bethune is born during Reconstruction, 1875. Um, by the dawn of the 20th century, um, she's an educator founding a girls' school in Daytona, Florida. She's a suffragist who's going to work, um, tirelessly to get black women, um, registered and to the polls in 1920 in the state of Florida. She's going to do that in the face of extraordinary, extraordinary, unspeakable Klan violence in the state of Florida. Um, Mrs. Bethune will go on to help Franklin Roosevelt organize in 1930s his black cabinet. Here, she learns to do an end run around disenfranchisement in Florida and many places across the country. And, um, uses patronage to bring black Americans, um, into the federal government, um, to help steer resources to black communities during the Depression. Um, her career would be long enough that in 1945, she'll be at the founding in San Francisco of the United Nations, part of a African American delegation. Uh, where she'll link arms with women of color from across the globe. Um, for whom her struggles against Jim Crow, um, really resonate with their own struggles against apartheid, against colonialism, and more. It's an extraordinary career. But she's really on my mind these days because, um, rightly so, a lot of us have, um, spent time contemplating, um, the Capitol. Um, and by that, I mean the Capitol O Capitol, the U.S. Capitol. Um, and Mrs. Bethune is about to be installed, um, in the national, um, statuary collection, um, replacing a longstanding statue that represented the state of Florida, the figure of a Confederate general. Um, now Mrs. Bethune, this educator, suffragist, um, political operative, um, international, um, figure of consequence. Um, will, um, be someone that we all will encounter, um, when we next have the opportunity to visit the Capitol. Um, it seems like a very apt, um, place for her to wind up, um, for someone who has told a story like hers in Vanguard. >> John Haskell: More recently, you have an article earlier this month in the Washington Post about, uh, about the reception in your book and discussing your book received in Louisiana. Tell us a little bit about that. >> Martha Jones: Yes, um, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, uh, this past year, funded, um, a series of, uh, book readings, conversations, um, in local public libraries, on the theme of voting rights. And among the books selected, um, was indeed my book, Vanguard. Um, a school board in Lafayette, Louisiana, um, when presented with the opportunity to host one of these programs, um, a program that would include a discussion of Vanguard. Um, decided to decline, um, and not to host the event. Um, and their concern, I'm going to say their concern as they expressed it, was that, um, uh, the two sides of the story of voting rights were not being, um, represented. Um, and I've thought a lot about that two sides must be represented position. Um, and, you know, on the one hand, I thought I don't think they've actually read my book because there is a great deal of, if you will, the other side. Which is to say you can't tell the story of African American women and voting rights without introducing, um, those, um, organizations, characters, and historical moments. In which, um, their voting rights are, um, very much opposed, very much suppressed, very much denied. I just referred to Mrs. Bethune, for example, um, who faced the Ku Klux Klan. Um, so I do think, in fact, my book, um, does a sort of justice to the other side. Um, but as I understand it, the board didn't see it that way. And so, um, the happy ending to the story, if there is one, is that the, um, local university, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is going to host the event. >> John Haskell: So after making the, uh, the kind of impact you've had with a, uh, uh, uh, with what we've just talked about, which isn't necessarily positive, in all respects, although the ending's good, I guess. Um, what are you working on next? How are you looking to, as an historian who really writes for a much broader public than just academics, what are you looking to do next? >> Martha Jones: Yeah, um, you know, I think one of the, um, defining characteristics of my work is to tell, um, chapters of American history, some of them familiar, some of them less familiar. But to tell those chapters, um, standing in the shoes of black Americans. Um, so I'm at work now on the early stages of a biography of a somewhat notorious figure in U.S. history, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney. Um, Justice Taney, um, had a long career that stretched from the end of the 18th century all the way through to the Civil War. Um, he's best known, um, most notorious, I think, for his decision in, uh, 1857 in the Dred Scott case in which Justice Taney concluded that no black American could be a citizen of the United States. Um, Taney is a controversial figure, an enduring figure, um, someone who, um, whose ideas I think, um, we haven't fully appreciated from the perspective of the black Americans who were his peers. Um, who were his associates, who were, in some cases, his servants, and even, um, those held enslaved by him. Um, so, uh, I'm looking forward to retelling the life of Roger Brooke Taney, um, from that vantage point. >> John Haskell: That's all the time we have, Martha. We thank you so much for joining us and, uh, we look forward to seeing you back at the Library soon. >> Martha Jones: Thanks very much.