Shades of Identity: Martha S. Jones on Race, Family, and History

Martha S. Jones
00:00:00

And I take the front of the room. I'm sort of shaking, you know, with my little index cards in front of me. There's no iPads, people. I've got my little index cards.

And I begin to present.

And up stands a classmate, Ron, who is really outraged that I am standing in front of the class and purporting to speak about someone as important and profound as Frantz Fanon. And he lets everybody know in explicit terms, right, that he thinks I don't belong. He thinks I'm not a person who should be. If not, maybe I.

Maybe I could sit in the class, but I need to be quiet and not sort of take responsibility for these ideas or the learning that was going on.

Matt Gilhooly
00:00:58

Today's guest is Martha S. Jones, and I'm really just honored to share this conversation with her. She is a remarkable historian, a writer.

She's a professor, among many other things. In our conversation, we discuss the profound complexities of identity, resilience and family history.

As she goes through her story, reflecting on her life as a biracial woman navigating this world that's really divided by race, Martha opens up about these pivotal moments in her life, from growing up in her family during the civil rights era to this transformative and challenging experience in college that really made her have to think about her sense of belonging, and it truly shaped her path forward.

Our conversation and her story is really about this power of self discovery, the importance of storytelling, and, as she puts it, the humor and humanity that can emerge even in life's most difficult moments.

So whether you've questioned your place in the world or sought to better understand the complexities of family and history and the people around you, I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. I know I did. And as I often say, these conversations heal little parts of me that I didn't know still needed healing.

So thank you to Martha for this beautiful conversation, and congratulations on today's book release. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Martha S. Jones.

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift, Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast. I am here with Martha. Hello, Martha.

Martha S. Jones
00:02:45

Hi, Matt.

Matt Gilhooly
00:02:47

Thank you for wanting to be a part of the Life Shift podcast.

I'm sure listeners by this point know that I've been talking to you for a few minutes, and we've already had our whole conversation, so now we're going to record it.

Martha S. Jones
00:02:58

Super for that. Thank you.

Matt Gilhooly
00:03:01

Well, for anyone that's Listening for the first time. Maybe you're tuning in because Martha is a guest on the show. The Life Shift podcast really comes from my own personal experience. I was.

Well, in 2022, I got a second master's degree because I was bored during the pandemic, and I took a podcasting class, and I was like, oh, gosh, what am I going to talk about? What am I going to record these two required episodes about? And I thought, well, I should probably do something that I'm afraid of.

I should probably talk about things that scare me, because I can't be the only one that has these feelings inside.

And so the Life Shift came about because When I was 8, my dad had the unfortunate experience of having to sit me down and tell me that my mom had died in a motorcycle accident and that my life was going to change. At that moment in time, everything that my parents ever imagined for me was gone. And now we had to create this new life together.

This was 1989, so I don't think there were a lot of people really talking about mental health or grief, especially for kids. I think it was very much, oh, they'll bounce back. They're kids.

So I assumed all that because all the adults around me were like, wanted me to be happy. So I was like, oh, well, I have to show them I am happy. Behind the scenes. I always wondered, are there other people like me?

In which this one moment, this line in the sand moment changed everything. Turns out we have a lot of those. But in my grief journey, I was so focused on that one moment that it just.

It was really, really significant, pivotal moment in my life. And I know I not be this person that I am now. If I had not had that experience as a child and the 20 years of failing at grief after that.

So now I have the Life Shift podcast, and I get to talk to people like you, Martha, and hundreds, I guess I can say, at this point, of other people sharing these stories.

And what I've really learned is, although we have wildly different stories, for most people, there are so many similarities into the way that we feel about things or we approach things or the way we internalize things, that I've grown so much more than I ever could imagine just by listening to other people's stories. So I am so very honored that you would want to share your story on this show.

Martha S. Jones
00:05:26

Well, I think I'm the one that's honored.

First, it's important to say, because I know that you have your own story, but that you have been the shepherd for many Many people, as you said, I think you told me earlier, 170 plus episodes. And to me that's remarkable because you can't help but I think, absorb other people's stories.

You can't just sort of listen to them as a podcast host.

And that, to me is remarkable because I think our stories about grief, about loss, about pain, about dislocation are oftentimes the stories that folks tune because they are hard to hear, hard to absorb. So I'm grateful to you for making space for me and my story, but I know we are making space for lots of other folks and their stories too.

Matt Gilhooly
00:06:28

Yeah. I think it's so important to what you just said.

I think some people shy away from things that feel really hard because they don't know how to just listen. I don't think we have to do anything other than just listen. Right. We don't have to solve, we don't have. We feel like we do.

We feel like something's broken, we need to fix it. But I found in this journey that just listening can help the storyteller sort through things, feel better.

It can help listeners to some of these stories feel less alone.

Because maybe like I did as that 8 year old, I knew I wasn't the only 8 year old with a dead parent, but at the same time, I felt like I was the only 8 year old without a. Without a parent, you know, like missing a parent.

So the idea that people like you and myself and other people that share their stories, we're helping people that will probably never even meet feel less alone in that journey or that circumstance that they're in. I've talked to a lot of people. It doesn't have to be this tragedy. It doesn't have to be something like so devastatingly hard. Right.

I talk to people about one day, they got this email and it lit this fire in them in a positive way. They changed their whole life around to do something really that they've always dreamed of doing.

Martha S. Jones
00:07:49

I love that.

Matt Gilhooly
00:07:50

And so other people listening might be at that same pivotal moment where they're just like, oh, maybe I could do it, maybe I could try. So it's just, I. The power of story is so beautiful. I wish I knew the power of story when I was 10, 15, 20, 25.

But here I am, and I'm lucky in 40s to be able to have these, these conversations. So let's get into your story.

But before we dive into your pivotal moment, maybe you can tell us who Martha is in 2025, however you want to Describe yourself.

Martha S. Jones
00:08:22

Sure. Well, I. I'm talking to you from my home in Baltimore, Maryland. And I've been in Baltimore now coming on eight years.

And I came here because I'm a teacher, a researcher, a writer, a historian, and then I work at a university here in Baltimore. I live here with my. My husband, who is also a historian. So we are two kind of book nerds on steroids.

This morning we high fived over breakfast around book stuff. That's what it's like in my house.

Matt Gilhooly
00:08:58

That you're probably really good at Jeopardy.

Martha S. Jones
00:09:00

Too, right? Yeah, a lot of. Well, I don't wanna say useless. Cause on Jeopardy. It would be useful, but otherwise a lot of knowledge.

But more recently, because I've been at this for a while, I've turned to being more concertedly a writer.

And so I long done a lot of professional writing and publishing, but these days I'm writing more personal narratives telling my story and the story of my family. So I'm in a. I'm in a moment here as a historian and writer and teacher and sometimes, you know, a public intellectual they sometimes call us.

Matt Gilhooly
00:09:43

It's a lot of pressure.

Martha S. Jones
00:09:44

You know, I've been trying to think of another term for public intellectual because I don't like it very much. But you get the point, I hope.

Matt Gilhooly
00:09:50

Yes, of course.

Martha S. Jones
00:09:51

But really experiencing. And your invitation, you know, to join you here on the podcast is an example of that.

Really experiencing what it's like to, in a sense, turn the camera on myself and to open up in a way that, you know, a lot of us in work life, we're not. It doesn't require us to reveal or to think hard about ourselves.

We get to keep a demeanor that keeps those things protected, you know, but also hidden. And so I'm at a moment where I'm trying to discover what it's like to talk about things that are closer to me, closer to my heart. Yeah. So here I am.

Matt Gilhooly
00:10:38

Are you finding that to be difficult or challenging or beautiful or all the, all the pieces?

Martha S. Jones
00:10:44

I think it's all the things, right. Because I'm still at the stage where I share something.

I have a new book that's coming in some weeks and I've been sharing it bit by bit with family, with other writers, and you kind of hold your breath until somebody comes back and says something, you know, and for those of you out there who have said nothing to me, it's okay, but I'm still holding my breath because it is so new, it is so different, and it is so personal, so I think it's all the things kind of all at once.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:26

Were you brought up to kind of keep things, like, separate and hidden?

Martha S. Jones
00:11:31

Oh, my gosh.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:32

Okay.

Martha S. Jones
00:11:33

Totally.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:33

Because I was too. I mean, I think it's, It's a new thing.

Martha S. Jones
00:11:36

I. I was raised, you know, that you kept all of the, you know, the dirty laundry. Right. I don't know.

That metaphor still holds for people, but in my day we called it dirty laundry. Right.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:49

You don't air that.

Martha S. Jones
00:11:50

You don't air it.

And you, you know, you button yourself up and you wash your face and you, you straighten your dress and you go out into the world and don't let people see what might be going on. And I think that's, you know, partly an ethic that comes out of my particular family.

I think it's also cultural, which is to say that, I don't know, my husband comes from a French family of the Mediterranean, and they talk about everything and very loud and very animated and very unselfconscious. And I find that fascinating because I really didn't come from a family like that.

And in these recent years where I've been trying to write about my family bumping up again and again against the realization that I remember this, but we never talked about it. Right. And so I don't really know everything about how my parents might have felt or a sibling might have felt.

So there's a legacy, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, that comes with that kind of family. And then we have questions about ourselves when we break the silence. Right. Or we violate the code.

Matt Gilhooly
00:13:07

The unwritten code.

Martha S. Jones
00:13:08

Yeah, the unwritten code. And so I'm there.

Matt Gilhooly
00:13:11

I think it's beautiful. I love it. For you, I would imagine if you're teaching like college age individuals too, you're probably seeing some of that freedom. Ish.

More so I guess maybe than 10, 15, 20 years ago. I mean, I started being open about how I was feeling. Probably in my mid-30s was when I kind of had my breakthrough in my.

In my grief journey with my mom.

And then my grandmother got sick and I, I did all the right things when she was dying and, and spent her last 96 hours with her and did all, did all the things that I couldn't do with my mom. But after that I was like, you know what? It doesn't matter. This is my story. So I can tell my story how I see it.

And if it doesn't align with the people that were in my lives, then that's their story. It's a different One, you know, and so I. I love this for you. I'm. I hope you are finding that joy and feeling that peace and. And the connection.

So I think that's a perfect segue into sharing your story.

Maybe you can paint the picture of your life leading up to this pivotal moment, and you can go back how far, how, wherever you need to go to kind of give us the picture that you want to paint.

Martha S. Jones
00:14:21

Sure. I was born. Does every begin? I was born. I was born. You know, I was born at the end of the 1950s.

And that's important because in my family story, we're really still in the early years of what we come to think of as the civil rights era. And my parents met in New York city in the 50s.

She From Buffalo, New York, the child of working class German immigrants, and he a black American from North Carolina. So when they marry in 1957, it is still illegal in 17 or 18 states, including his home state of North Carolina.

Matt Gilhooly
00:15:09

Makes no sense to me.

Martha S. Jones
00:15:11

No, but, you know, but made sense to a whole lot of people in the 1950s.

Still, you know, we're still 10 years away from the Supreme Court finally in 1967, saying it's unconstitutional to bar marriage across the color line. So, you know, they marry in New York, and I'm born the next year.

And there are a lot of questions that sort of run through a family like ours, not the least of which is how should people regard us as children Right at. My parents seemed to fit more or less neatly on one side or the other of some imagined color line.

But children whom today we would call mixed race day, we would call, you know, multiracial. Those categories didn't exist. I hate.

I don't know, I hate to tell people that, but I think it's important, you know, that those kind of categories didn't exist. And. And we live a kind of a life that moves through many kinds of worlds. I'm born in New York City.

I spend my earliest years in central Harlem, where we live. We spend a lot of time in the south with my father's mother in North Carolina, but my mother's family is in Buffalo.

And we spend time there, which is a very different kind of world. And then when I'm four, we moved to the suburbs, to Long island, where my parents buy a tiny tract house on the GI Bill.

My father had been in the Navy. And I go to school and, you know, I am teased, I am queried. Sometimes I'm hassled.

But I grow up thinking more or less that while I'm not like other kids. Kids by nature are teased and hassled, and I wasn't sure, or maybe I hoped that I would outgrow that or that would fall away as I went to college.

And I'm going to stop there because that takes me to my pivotal moment.

Matt Gilhooly
00:17:38

I mean, I would imagine I'm thinking of you now with all this context of the.

The history and the stuff that you know and all the research that you've probably done over the years, looking back on your childhood or when your parents met and thinking how. How this is not the right words, but how, like, far we've come, but also not how far we've like, and how much we've regressed.

And does that cloud when you reflect back on. As you. As a child, does that cloud any of that? Like, you. You fill in gaps because you're like. Because you know the history, you know all the pieces.

Martha S. Jones
00:18:18

Well, you know, that's the historian in me, right, That I can, in a sense, create just a enough distance between myself, the girl, right. Still in me and that past because I can fill in so much context. And my editor on this memoir, she would call.

When I would do that on the page, she would call it cheating. She would say, you're cheating again. Right.

Instead of getting to the heart of things, instead of telling us what that felt like, what that meant for you, what that meant for the people around you. You're giving me lots of very interesting context. But she understood that as a way of avoiding.

So part the process in these last years for me has been, yes, I know a great deal. And I could narrate for you all day the history of race and segregation and interracial marriage.

And those are important contexts for my life and the life of my family. But I was trying to get to something else. And that meant not overindulging in that more analytic way of thinking about the past.

Matt Gilhooly
00:19:41

So as a child growing up, did you notice how your parents were being treated? Were, Were. Were those things, like, super noticeable? I think of myself as a kid, and I'm like, did I pay attention to those things? Was I own.

Was I in my own world? Did everyone know that I had a dead parent? Like, I don't remember a lot of that, and that was probably trauma informed, but that's probably some.

A whole other story. But did you. Did you notice the things that were happening and you feel they were different, or did it just feel normal for you?

Martha S. Jones
00:20:11

No, I absolutely did.

And I think that to some degree, they wanted me and I should say ultimately us, because I have two beautiful siblings, you know, that they wanted us to understand, I think mostly the political moment in which we were coming of age. You know, when we move to what was an all white enclave in the suburbs, they are ostracized and threatened.

And at the same time, there are neighbors who are more sympathetic to us as children and extend, you know, a friendly invitation or a welcome, but we're aware. And then it's the. Now it's 1962, 1963, 64.

Civil rights has become, you know, our family embodies, you know, part of this national and international story. And so we see parts of our lives mirrored, you know, on the nightly news and in the newspaper. And I was the kind of kid, I am not unique.

I'm the kind of kid who's always kind of listening in on the adult talk because I'm nosy, but also. But also because I'm trying to understand the world. Right. And I'm curious. So I do know that.

And at the same time, to go back to our earlier point, we're not talking about this in wholly open, free terms. Right.

We're getting lessons, we're getting news, but mostly we're left to ourselves to manage how it feels, whether you are hurt or frightened or just unsure. Right. Of the world and where you stand in it.

Matt Gilhooly
00:22:05

I would imagine as a parent, you want to, like, empower your children in a way not to scare them, not tell them all the things that we, as parents are feeling at certain times. So I could imagine how that goes. Did you have other families that were similar to yours near you? Did you?

Or were you truly, like, feeling like you were the only ones like this in your space?

Martha S. Jones
00:22:25

Right. We did not.

Matt Gilhooly
00:22:28

Okay. That makes it challenging.

Martha S. Jones
00:22:30

And so there wasn't. I didn't have a story in my head about family like ours. I didn't see examples of families like ours. And I very keenly felt, though, it wasn't true.

Right. Of course, if you look at the big picture, but in our little world, we were particular and we were peculiar. Right. For people.

Matt Gilhooly
00:22:54

And you probably logically knew that you weren't the only families that were like that. But at the same time, you do feel like it's like how I said I felt, like I was the only kid who had a dead parent.

You know, it's like, I know that it can happen, but it feels very isolating in that. Why don't you, why don't you tell us what your pivotal moment is? Because I know it feeds right into this. And I think it's so.

It's disappointing, I guess, is my perspective without knowing too much.

Martha S. Jones
00:23:22

Yeah, I finish high school barely, but I do finish high school. It's another story. And I go to college in upstate New York and I arrive and remarkably, I'm very clear about what I intend to study.

And I become a psychology major and I become a Black studies minor. It's 1976. So black studies as a scholarly field is really just being born, is just coming into being. It's an extremely exciting moment.

The faculty are young, they're very political, and they are literally inventing the wheel in this area of study. And I have an opportunity at my college to minor and to study with some really remarkable folks. And I don't think too much about.

I don't think too much about the teasing or the questions or the other troubling stuff that I had experienced during high school around how I looked or how I didn't look to people. And maybe I even imagined, fantasized that I was going to leave that behind, right?

That I was going to, you know, I was away from home, I was away from that kind of small world of a suburb. And now I was in the real world or version of it, you know, with grownups and big ideas.

But it was true that in my Black Studies class, my presence unsettled some students. One in particular, my black sociology professor, had me make an oral report on a book that is still one that is read and so important today.

Frantz Fanon's A Dying Colonialism about the battle between France and its one time colony of Algeria. But Fanon is a psychiatrist and a philosopher and a deep thinker about race and racism. And I read the book, I barely understand it.

But I'm going to prepare an oral report and I show up to give my report and I take the front of the room. I'm sort of shaking, you know, with my little index cards in front of me. There's no iPads, people.

I've got my little index cards and I begin to present.

And up stands a classmate, Ron, who is really outraged that I am standing in front of a class and purporting to speak about someone as important and profound as Frantz Fanon. And he lets everybody know, in no, you know, in explicit terms, right, that he thinks I don't belong. He thinks I'm not a person who should be.

If not, maybe I, maybe I could sit in the class, but I need to be quiet and not sort of take, you know, responsibility for these ideas. Or the learning that was going on. And you know, there's some funny moments in the story. He says to the professor, Fanon was from Martinique.

And he says, well, you know, she doesn't even know where the French Antilles are. And ultimately my answer is, they're in France. But I have no idea. I'm really just making, making it up. It's awful. And class ends.

I finish the report, class ends, and I go back to my dorm room really, really shaken.

But I share this as I do at the beginning of the book, because in some ways it was just an indelible moment that let me know that the questions that I had once thought were teasing were deeper or much more profound than that, that my presence really troubled people so much, so right, that someone would interrupt a report and stand up in a class and object.

It also connected, you know, to questions that I also had, right, about who I was and how I fit into a world that seemed to be divided between black and white.

And so as painful as it was, it also set me on a course of, you know, self exploration, of learning more about my own family and, you know, ultimately, as I sit today, a professor of, you know, history and black history.

Matt Gilhooly
00:28:09

So that moment in the class you said that it kind of reminded you of questions you had asked yourself in this. Maybe not the exact questions or not the same way. Did that like, trigger something or was there like, shame that comes with that?

Like, what is the emotion that comes with that when you realize someone just called me out for things that I might also think about myself, which are not necessarily, quote unquote, valid questions because I am who I am?

Martha S. Jones
00:28:40

Yeah, shame is definitely one feeling sense that I should be not only self conscious, but perhaps embarrassed and even apologize for the lightness of my skin or the, you know, the limpness of my hair or in those days, my definite suburban diction. So shame is one feeling, but not the only one.

I would say, you know, at the same time, a very quiet kind of anger or rage, you know, that said, you know, as I did to myself back in my room, right, where I didn't have to confront anyone, which is like, who do I think I am? You know, who do you think you are? You know, who do you think you are calling me out?

But that was a very quiet voice and not one that I could, you know, express full throatedly. And then I think there's the genuine puzzle, right? Or confusion, right? So what, where is the place for someone like me if it's not in this classroom?

And I should say I went back to the class and I finished the class. And I took many other Black studies classes in those years, including with Ron, who became a friend over time.

Matt Gilhooly
00:30:06

Yeah, but because he learned who you were, he got to know you.

Martha S. Jones
00:30:10

We did. You know we did. We were both interested in student government and the student newspaper.

And so we met under other circumstances where we could know each other, you know, less in stark terms about identity and more, you know, what do you think about the new policy and education coming out of Albany, the state capitol? Or, you know, what do you think about the new rules, about vending machines, machines on campus? You know, we were.

You know, we had lots to talk about, and we were interested in the same things, but it's also true that we never talked about what had happened in the class, and I didn't then. And maybe, you know, this is a lifelong, if not a quest, but a query for me. Right. How to explain in a, you know, in a sound bite who you are.

You know, really, I think a lot of us feel cheated, you know, if. If what we get, you know, are like two boxes and a nod, you know, it's not enough to tell anybody who you are.

And labels and boxes, you know, and stereotypes are really not. What. Not very satisfying.

Matt Gilhooly
00:31:27

But at the time, I feel like those boxes were much more narrow. I feel like now you could spend a lot of time because we have more language around the different ways we can describe ourselves.

I'm thinking of that time period in which, like, everyone was so. I mean, things were emerging, but people were so divided, and it was either this or that. It wasn't this.

A whole spectrum of who we could be as individuals, not just our backgrounds, but all the things that we bring to the table as humans. We're also.

And I'm imagining this is true for you because I can see it in the other generations in my family of, like, you're just also not taught to express all those pieces. Were you conditioned to, you know, you have to be this or that? Or do you feel like you were given the freedom to.

To be you and not necessarily a bucket?

Martha S. Jones
00:32:24

You know, I think my parents maybe weren't of one mind, and that sort of contributes. Right. To how kids are able to figure things out or.

When I look back at my mother and I think about her, I think my mother, perhaps naively, but I think generously at the same time, wanted to imagine that we could just be whoever we were, and she wasn't going to, as you should be, speak to us about labels and insist on that.

Now, my father, right, who had grown up in segregated America, knew that people would buy the good old one drop rule, if nothing else, determined that we were black, even if that was complicated and not self evident. And he wanted us to know very clearly what that meant historically and sociologically and in lived experience.

And the wrinkle, I think, in my family, but I don't think it's unique, is that, you know, my mother's family pretty much disowned her when she married my father. And so we didn't know her family. I certainly didn't. I didn't have an. I didn't identify with them in any way.

And so I was really raised as a black person, as a family matter, as a cultural matter, even if my appearance and even if my mother complicated that. And I was comfortable with that.

But what I was learning, right, and what Ron made apparent was that I might be comfortable with that, but that wasn't the whole. There was the other part of the story, or at least one other part of the story, was how other people would discern and read me.

And I was gonna have to contend with that.

No matter who I thought I was, I could have a strong sense of self and identity, and I still was going to have to live in a world where how other people see you matters and has consequences, even as you might push back against that.

Matt Gilhooly
00:34:33

Yeah. Did you feel like, a sense of responsibility to prove something to people like who you were?

Did you feel the responsibility to educate them, to tell them they were a bunch of idiots? Like, did. How did you. Like, did you. Did you take on the world in this sense of, like, I am who I am? I don't necessarily.

Do I need to teach you, like, my DNA and all these pieces that makes me a full human?

Martha S. Jones
00:35:00

Mm. The answer is yes, in part because I want to be in the world. Right. I want to be in.

And so it has felt important at times to make myself legible to people, even if that's complicated. Right. You know, but to make myself legible, but as a young person. Right. I really didn't.

You know, the thing I took away from that moment with Ron was that the story I wanted to tell him was about my family, that I look the way I do because I come from a family and a history of some of. Some things, you know, almost unspeakable. Right. I come from, you know, a line of enslaved women who were exploited sexually by slaveholders.

I also come from parents, right, who, in the spirit of civil rights, crossed the color line and married. But as A young adult. I didn't know enough of that story or how to organize it. And frankly, nobody's really asking you to.

Like, nobody's really interested in sitting down with you and having you recite generations of your family. But for me, like, that was the story I really thought had integrity. Right. That people don't understand, you know, okay, I would allow for that. Right.

That people don't understand how someone comes to look the way I do.

There is a story about that, but most of the time when you're having a social encounter with people, they're not there for you to pull them aside and, and tell them a long tale about your family. Which is why very late in my own life story, my own journey, as you put it so nicely, I finally wrote a book. Right.

You know, I was the person whose way of telling stories is writing, and I could put together the story well enough to finally kind of tell it in a full throated way.

Matt Gilhooly
00:37:10

I'd love to go back to Ron, but first, just because you just said that, I.

Do you feel that in this journey of like writing your story in your words, in your way, knowing the context that you have, did it, did it fill in any potential gaps that you had in like, like an example? This show, talking to people helps heal me in little ways through all these conversations, ways that I didn't know that I needed to be healed.

Did any of your writing journey help you piece things together that maybe were a little fractured?

Martha S. Jones
00:37:43

Yes. I mean, it was all, you know, a kind of puzzle. I had stories, you know, that I had inherited. I had writings by some of my ancestors.

I had lots of, you know, official, like, you know, artifacts like birth certificates and death certificates. There was a lot to work with.

And so I hope, you know, I put together the pieces of the puzzle well enough that it holds together as a story that explains who we've been and how it's felt to be us.

But the thing I didn't expect, and this is the thing I want to say, because it still surprises me, is that somehow on the other side of all that, very kind of meticulous, I hope, thoughtful, you know, reflection and probing. I found a sense of humor. I found the humor in it.

You know, there is a way in which, of course, you know, race in America is as serious, as grave, you know, as powerful a set of ideas as any. Regretfully so, in large part, but very powerful. And that must be taken up with due care and respect.

But somehow I really began to see how absurd some of it is. Right. You Know, trying to, you know, the infinite ways in which this country has tried to create boxes, put us in boxes, draw lines.

I used to be afraid of the people in my family who tried to defy the lines. I had a great grandmother who from time to time passed as white when she wanted to shop in a department store or go to a movie.

And I was embarrassed about that for the longest time. But after writing this book, I admired her and had to laugh at some of what she pulled off, you know, that.

Because she was really, in her own way, flaunting all the rules, no shame. And self consciously so. And no shame. And I began to see the. The absurdity and.

And find a kind of wry humor in a lot of that that I had never, ever known.

Matt Gilhooly
00:40:11

Yeah, when you said that, I was like, yeah, it all. I think I started out our conversation just saying, like, how it's so silly that we're still, like, thinking these ways.

And when you said you found the humor, I was like, yeah, because it all, like, it doesn't make any sense because we're human beings. Like, that's all that should matter, you know, like, what did. What. What does a color do? I mean, I just.

And this is super ignorant and naive of me, but.

Martha S. Jones
00:40:38

No, I mean, I hear you. And I think in an ideal sense, I probably would, you know, co sign just that.

And at the same time, I think that the way the wheels are turning, even as we sit here and we're talking to each other, human to human, we know that our world is still, you know, divvying us up and dividing us and creating hierarchies, old hierarchies, new hierarchies. And so that there is a profound graveness to the lie that is race.

And I would say that there is also a joy that is not derived from being boxed in or labeled or, you know, held to somebody else's standard, you know, But I think in my life, because I am a.

I am a historian of black America, you know, far beyond the boundaries of my own family, I can also say that, you know, we have transformed on many days and in many contexts, Right.

The racism, if I could put it that way, that created these categories and out of them created culture and community that is deeply meaningful and sustaining and a pleasure. And so I think both of those things can be true, if. If that makes sense.

Matt Gilhooly
00:42:22

I agree.

I think, you know, just by saying that, I think anyone that has ever been othered in some way finds their group, finds their people, finds their way of surviving and loving life, and Doing the things that, that the people around them also love to do. So I agree with you completely. I think surface level, none of it makes sense to me, and I guess maybe that's a good thing.

But, you know, like, I just want to know the person.

I don't care any of the other pieces, and it's probably super privileged and naive of me, but at the same time, I talk to so many different people across the world through this podcast, and these stories have so many through lines, whether it's the same story or not. And, you know, like, as people, you know, we feel similarly about different experiences, if that makes any sense.

Martha S. Jones
00:43:16

I do. And I had, as I, long before I was contemplating a book, I. I wrote an essay for cnn.

It was called this is, you know, the title is never yours, but it was called Biracial and also Black, which I, I, which I can own. That, that's, that's. But here's the thing that happened. I had a friend who read it whose family history is very different than mine.

He's a Jewish American with one parent who was an Ashkenazi Jew and the other was a Sephardic Jew. And he said, your story made so much sense to me because I also come from mixed family. And it's not mixed like yours.

But let me tell you that the clashes and the misunderstandings and the negotiations and more, they were real in his family as they were in mine. And in a world where people have expectations and boxes and assumptions about who you are, the necessity to make yourself legible to people.

And I think today in the US where so many people are growing up in blended families, complicated families, in a way, I think my kind of story is not as unique as it might have been when I was a young person, because look around us and we see all kinds of Americans and not Americans, if I could add that importantly. But we see all kinds of people loving each other, making families, blending families from near and far.

And in that are new ways of knowing and understanding who we are and new complexities to navigate and figure out, new language to discover about how to describe that. And today you can watch it on TikTok. There's something called the biracial lounge, and I go on there all the time.

But it's young people telling their versions of, if you will, my story by very different terms than I have told my own. And I love seeing that and appreciating how this is not a sidebar in our American family story. It's really one of these stories.

Matt Gilhooly
00:45:34

Yeah. To seeing more of Your family seeing more of that in the world, does that make you feel any better, different, involved, connected?

Are there any feelings as you see more people that represent how you might have felt as a child? I think you don't have to say yes.

Martha S. Jones
00:45:55

No. I think the answer is yes.

And because these are moments in which you see a version of yourself reflected back, you know, and this is, I think, a very old insight, you know, about what it means to look across the world or to watch television or to, you know, look at political candidates or, you know, choose your scene. Right. But how meaningful it is to see someone who seems to be like you and what an invitation that is, what a reassurance that is, or what a.

Just what a pleasure that is. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:46:31

Because growing up you didn't get to see any examples of you grown up.

Martha S. Jones
00:46:35

Yeah, right.

Matt Gilhooly
00:46:36

Like you didn't have, like, oh, this is who I could be. I mean, you probably did.

And logically you thought through it or dreamed about it, but like, you don't see the examples of these people that were going to be successful and do all the things that you had dreamed of doing.

Martha S. Jones
00:46:51

Yeah, I mean, I would, you know, I mean, I'll invoke, you know, one of the more famous mixed race Americans, Barack Obama, who very poignantly, when folks began to probe his family history and reveal its complexity, Obama said, well, that's American history, isn't it? You know, that's who we are, you know, and that's as American as any family story. And I guess that's what I'd want to say to my young self. Right.

You know, that your family is as American as any and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. But it took me a while to get there.

Matt Gilhooly
00:47:30

I do want to just circle back to Ron.

When you stood up there shaking your paper and worried about getting that, that oral report out of your mouth and into the ears of the people around you, you probably felt differently than you did that later that night in your dorm room. What, what do you think changed the most by. By those words that he uttered or that conversation that you guys had or the confrontation?

I guess maybe I think I had.

Martha S. Jones
00:47:56

To put on a bit of armor and I had.

I didn't have to, but I did put on armor and begin to think in ways that anticipated the questions that people had about me, whether they voiced them or they didn't voice them. And probably I misread people. You know, probably I was defensive in situations where I need not have been.

Matt Gilhooly
00:48:32

But you had to protect yourself.

Martha S. Jones
00:48:34

But I wore A kind of armor. And I lived with a kind of wariness about.

I think that why that was such a pivotal moment for me, you know, was being called out in public, you know, kind of naked in the front of the classroom.

And that is different, I think, than even teasing on the playground or somebody who's unkind to you, you know, at work or in a social setting was sort of. You're standing up there all by yourself, and now somebody is saying, you know, who do you think you are? Wow.

Matt Gilhooly
00:49:11

It's like questioning your validity as a human.

Martha S. Jones
00:49:13

I think. I think a version of that. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:49:16

Did it feel like. Did you. It sounded like you went to college with this hope, this I had, the world is my oyster kind of hope.

Did it diminish any of that, or did you still retain some of that hope for a brighter future?

Martha S. Jones
00:49:31

I think the hope kind of morphed into a stubbornness, frankly, which is to.

Matt Gilhooly
00:49:38

Say, which is protection.

Martha S. Jones
00:49:39

I continued to show up in the place I wanted to show up. I continued to study the things I wanted to study and do the kind of work I wanted to do.

I certainly learned how to build a community of people who, you know, could see me more or less and could embrace me despite. If I could put it that way, despite, you know, whatever ambivalences my. My looks might generate for them or the people around them.

So I think that stubbornness is not everything, but it helped me to move forward in the world with a kind of deep integrity about who I knew I was and who I wanted to be and become. Yeah. Grateful for that, even if it was not everything.

Matt Gilhooly
00:50:36

No. I mean, I also think of these moments in our lives where they seem terrible in the moment, but maybe they were, like, so good for us in this.

In this way. Do you look at that moment as something that was actually, if we get down to the nuts and bolts of it, really positive shift in your life?

Martha S. Jones
00:50:56

Well, I. I think you could say.

I mean, Ron taught me something that I needed to know, which is that people had questions, and I was going to be subject to those questions from time to time, and I better learn how to tolerate them and answer them as best I could. And that, yes, you know, I would go on myself to be a teacher. Years ago now, I taught a class on interracial marriage in America.

Something like that, a better title. But that was the. That was the gist of it.

But I had, you know, the room filled with young people who came, a lot of them from families like mine or were contemplating making families like mine And I thought, okay, now, Ron's question and the journey that it set me on has a purpose far beyond my own life. And I can be here for young people who have their own questions and their own answers, and they're not mine and all that, but.

But that's extraordinary.

And I don't know if you said it before we went on air or not, but you were talking about how out of grief, out of pain, out of the difficult moments when we survive them, we are made into new people. And I think he was an agent in that, so I have a deep gratitude for him. Even if it's a tough memory.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:35

Yeah. Yeah, I. I mean, I say the same, and it's so hard to say because I. Look, obviously, I don't want my mother to die.

I don't want her to die in a tragic way. But at the same time, all the things that have happened because of it, good, bad, indifferent, brought me to this version of me.

So if I look back and if I could wave a magic wand, I don't know if I would change it. And it's really terrible to say that out loud, but it's true, because, I don't know.

I like this version of me, and I know that I would not be this version of me had I not gone through all of that. So that's kind of where that question comes from. It's like, you know, sometimes. Well, actually, it relates to how I look at other people's stories.

I'm like, these people that are online telling me about all their wins and all the things. All the beautiful moments in their lives. Congratulations. But I can't relate.

I relate to so many more of the valleys of people's lives and how they navigated that with authenticity. I have a shirt on right now that I made that says all your feelings are valid. Because for so long, all of my feelings were not valid.

Martha S. Jones
00:53:51

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:53:52

I was only allowed to be happy or mad. And once I realized that I was allowed to be sad, I was allowed to be depressed, I was allowed to feel the gamut of emotions.

That was when I became, like, a full person, you know? And so it's just, you know, I'm.

I'm so honored that you let me ask these questions, even if I said something that sounded super privileged or confused or whatever that may be, because this is how we learn about other people, how to. How to exist as a full human in the world. So I just want to say thank you for allowing all of this.

Martha S. Jones
00:54:32

No, I. Thank you.

These are new kinds of conversations for Me, But I think what comes through, if I could put it that way for me, you know, is, you know, the kind of wisdom that you have accumulated in doing this work through your own life, but through the conversations. And so I appreciate you making space for me to, you know, talk with you in real ways. It's much appreciated.

Matt Gilhooly
00:55:06

I think we just need to have. Well, you and I, we need to have more conversations. But in general, I think humans need to have just real conversations.

We don't need to stay on the surface.

We can ask uncomfortable questions, and if they're too uncomfortable, then we need to feel safe enough to say that they're uncomfortable and not answer them and, and have that autonomy to be like, not, not today, maybe another time, you know, but that's. This is how we learn to exist together and not repeat things of the past and, you know, like, just learn to be good humans. So I, I appreciate you.

I love to, like, kind of wrap up the conversations with a question. And you kind of said, if you could go back to younger Martha, you would say you are an American family. You are a.

You exist in this world just like everyone else.

If you could go back to Martha, who was just about to do her oral report before her life was a little shaken up, is there anything you'd want to tell her?

Martha S. Jones
00:56:04

First I'd want to tell her you needed to do a little more homework because you really. Where are the French Antilles? Would have been a good thing to know before you got to the class, but.

Okay, I was a, I was a freshman and I forgive myself for that. No, I think that it's not a regret. Right. But if you got a do over, you know, I would have hung around after class. Right.

I would have talked to the professor about what happened. I would have learned how he saw it. Maybe Ron would have hung around. Maybe.

You know, I think as you're saying, you know, I would have just challenged myself just enough to begin those conversations. Now, I don't know where they would have gone, but I'll say the professor was a kind, kind, generous instructor who I took more than one class with.

And maybe he would have. I'm sure he had something to say. And I missed that. Right.

I missed that because I was too scared and too shaken and no judgment, but I think I would have tried to hang in there. That's what I do today. Right. In tough moments, I try and stay in the room, stay at the table.

Matt Gilhooly
00:57:19

That's beautiful.

Martha S. Jones
00:57:19

But I had to learn to do that.

Matt Gilhooly
00:57:21

Yeah. Yeah, I think we do. I mean, I would go back and I'd be like, dude, go like, get some therapy. Like, figure this out before you're 30.

Something, something. Because, you know, but at the same time, I needed to struggle. I need.

You needed to go to your dorm room and do what you needed to do and put on your shield and, you know, put your armor and. And face the world in the direction that you needed to go. And I think it's beautiful. And now you're going to help more people with this book.

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the book and then we kind of find out how people can get in touch with you.

Martha S. Jones
00:57:52

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:57:52

Tell us about the book.

Martha S. Jones
00:57:53

Thank you. The Trouble of Color, an American Family Memoir looks to answer Ron's question, who do you think you are?

And my answer is, I come from a family of people for whom color has always been a troubling dimension, a reflection of the trouble in their lives.

And so back to my great great grandmother, Nancy Belgraves, who was born in Danville, Kentucky, in 1808, born enslaved, and was more or less my color. Well, that's a difficult story because that's a story about slavery, about the sexual exploitation of enslaved women. But I follow each generation.

What I learned is just that each generation tells its own story. And so it's really a collection of stories and a deep appreciation for how in each generation we tell the stories we need to speak to our own time.

And so, in a way, the trouble of Color is my talking with them across time about my version of this experience.

Matt Gilhooly
00:59:09

Yeah, that's beautiful. You probably saw such stories of resilience through things that you and I could never imagine living through, and thankfully, in that way.

But the resilience that the human spirit has is just. Just unbelievable at times.

Martha S. Jones
00:59:27

Yeah, I think resilience, humor, cunning, you know, and also blundering. Right. And hurt and disappointment and confusion.

I think it's a very human story, and I'll say I was determined to tell it as, you know, as frankly as I could, which is to say there are no saints and there are no sinners. There are human beings in this story, human beings who live complicated lives and make complicated choices, live in complicated circumstances.

But on whole, I hope they tell us something about what it means to be a family and how American families get made.

Matt Gilhooly
01:00:12

Yeah, I look forward to it. When does it come out? What is the date of the march? Fourth, which very well could be close to the release date of this.

So probably by the time that this episode is out. So while you're listening, to it. There's going to be a link in the show notes. So what's the best way to find your book or connect with you?

Martha S. Jones
01:00:29

Sure, I say you will find the trouble of color anywhere you buy your books. Thanks to my Publisher's Basic Books online at your local indie bookseller and more.

So please go where you support your indie bookseller is what I would say always. And you can find me@marthasjones.com and you can read a lot more about this book and my other books and other writings and projects that I have.

And I look forward to seeing people out there in the world. I hope so I can hear more about their stories about family and the color line.

Matt Gilhooly
01:01:11

I would love that if, if someone is listening now and you know someone in your life that might need to hear this story or hear our conversation, really, please send it to them. I we would love that.

And you know, as I said earlier, you never know who's out there listening that might need to hear something that that you Martha said that makes them feel less alone in their experience or oh my gosh, I felt that same way. I thought I was the only one that felt that way kind of thing.

So please share this with others and I just, I just want to really, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for for wanting to be a part of this and then for going through it. It was really a wonderful conversation.

Martha S. Jones
01:01:49

I thank you so much.

Matt Gilhooly
01:01:51

Matt, if you are listening and you like the show, I would love a rating and review.

I'm supposed to say that I guess it sounds great, but with that I'm gonna say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of the Life Shift podcast. Thanks again, Martha. For more information please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.