'The Trouble of Color' author Martha S. Jones explores the color line bisecting Black family histories

(This program first aired on March 4, 2025) In this encore edition of Midday, we listen to a conversation Tom Hall had last spring with Dr. Martha Jones about her latest book, The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir. Jones is a former lawyer, a celebrated historian, and the author of several award-winning books. Her latest book is unlike any of her others: while it is a work of history, it is also a deeply personal account of Jones’ own family, and an exploration of the shifting, difficult, and thorny parameters of race and identity. Jones reminds us that, as W. E. B. DuBois wrote in his landmark 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” In The Trouble of Color, Jones writes, “I was learning that this boundary — one said to divide Black from White — was neither solid nor sure. It was instead jagged, sharp-edged and threatening.” The Trouble of Color is a beautifully crafted rumination on that jagged and threatening line, and a timely peroration on race at a moment in our country’s history when diversity and equity are under attack from officials in the highest levels of our government. (Because this program is recorded, we won't be taking any new calls or emails.)