Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America

by Martha S. Jones

Birthright Citizens tells how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans. Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the US Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law, secured allies, and conducted themselves like citizens, establishing their status through local, everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and an ambitious reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War, Jones shows how when the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, the aspirations of black Americans' aspirations were realized.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, American History, Law, African American

270 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2018

About the author

I am a writer, historian, and legal scholar who also teaches at the Johns Hopkins University. I am also the prize-winning author of several books. My latest - THE TROUBLE OF COLOR: AN AMERICAN FAMILY MEMOIR - is a big departure for me, turning my historian's lens toward my own family and myself. I've gone deep into who, as Americans, we call family and how that has changed across generations. It's a story that runs from slavery and sexual violence and anti-miscegenation laws to Jim Crow and civil rights. Throughout, my questions are about how color and the line it is said to draw across our lives and our national landscape is a legal fact and an everyday fiction.My past books include Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020), Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018) and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture (2007,) and Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015.)

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book addresses the formulation of citizenship in a period of uncertainty--yet possibility--for free people of color, in antebellum Baltimore roughly from 1790-1860s. Jones, a legal historian based out of Baltimore, considers the ways in which citizenship as a legal formulation of selfhood and rights were still very much in flux during this period in American history. While numerous laws bounded the existence of runaway slaves and enslaved peoples during this era, the free men and women of Baltimore utilized the lack of definition around citizenship to perform citizenship in a number of different ways. Over the course of this slim volume, Jones tracks the spaces of citizenship-testing and performance utilized in this period--from petitions in the courthouse and church to rights to mobility, gun-ownership, debt and indebtedness, to provisions of testimony and claims of ownership, free African-Americans of the era sought to explore where the potential of citizenship and civil rights might lie. In the period prior to the Dred Scott verdict, the exact question of who was a citizen, and to what they were entitled, was undefined, and so black parishes and black seamen found ways to enact modes of autonomy and status that were, if not outright acts of citizenship, at least something very close to it. As such, this is a profoundly fascinating and radical period of legal history, and citizenship/immigration history, to consider.

While this is only tangentially related to my readings in immigration history, it has some interesting overlaps with the works of Hiroshi Motomura (Americans in Waiting) and Roberto Gonzales (Lives in Limbo) in exploring the rights of those peoples with liminal legal status under American law. The notion that free blacks in Baltimore could leverage testimony against white citizens in a court of law--and have that testimony supported by white witnesses rather than outright dismissed--demonstrates the wide gap of interpretation between federal law and local law in this period. While Jones' work spans a national discourse around citizenship--her Chapter 2, on the promise of colonization/emigration on the basis of American citizenship denial, is fascinating--she is right to focus her history on the court cases emerging in Baltimore in this period, as Maryland occupied an unusual place of slave-holding yet also permissiveness toward free blacks in this era. It is important to note that acting citizenship is not the same thing as achieved citizenship--yet Jones never argues that it is a substitute, especially in Chapter 8 and the conclusion, where she traces the reactions to the Dred Scott case in the African-American press, and the many forms of citizenship claiming during the Civil War and into the postbellum era.

Finally, this book is most valuable for its many accounts of black resistance and legal agency that can be documented and studied in the period of note. Jones has done extensive and meaningful archival work to bring these figures to life, and it provides an important gesture toward thinking about the flexibility of legislation around questions of citizenship, civil rights, and belonging.

[Georgie Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birthright Citizens takes a deep dive into the free black communities of the Antebellum period, specifically through laws and court proceedings. I brought very little prior knowledge into my reading of this book and struggled accordingly - at times it was quite dense - but learned so much. Every page was crammed with citations from primary sources and minute details that really brought life to the free black community of Baltimore and its activism. Martha Jones did an incredible job researching and presenting uniquely complicated legal proceedings in Baltimore and contextualizing this in the national conversations about black citizenship of the time. This book was challenging to read, but I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about free black communities and black activism prior to the Civil War.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a fascinating non-fiction account of how black people made efforts to be seen as, and actually be, citizens throughout the 19th C., before and after the Civil War. There is lots of information (mostly new to me), and it is written in a very readable manner.

[E Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has helped me think about free black communities a lot. I wish I were still teaching so I could use this book.

[Madlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate authors who bring historical awareness to the readers in terms of racial injustice to Black African Americans.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll admit that current politics with the threat of eliminating birthright citizenship prompted me to read this title. However, it is all history, albeit fascinating history. Jones does something more like a people's history, going beyond the landmark moments of the Dred Scott verdict and 13-15th Amendments to the churning of ideas in the period before the decision and amendments. She does this with a focus on Baltimore, MD, though events and decisions in other states are occasionally referenced.

She divides the concept of citizenship into its component features (including the right to travel between states, to sue, and to bear witness among others), then does a painstaking survey of court cases showing some parts claimed by/awarded to free Blacks even while others are withheld. She links rights and citizenship and clarifies that free Blacks could have rights in the states and state courts (in some states) while denied them in the country and federal courts. Each feature gets a chapter. Some get interesting stories, others get lists of examples, according to what records exist. Some of the people are mentioned once, others appear off and on through the book. Near the end we learn the fate of those we have come to recognize.

It enlarges awareness of the time and wealth of actions that contribute to changes that we tend to mark in single moments.

[Jamie Bronstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that this was a really good work of history. It was smaller in scope than I expected it to be. Professor Jones focuses on baltimore to tease out how free people of color acted before the Dred Scott decision declared them to be non-rights-bearing non-citizens. Were they able to exercise some of the privileges of citizenship? How did they do that? I'm interested in 14th amendment jurisprudence and did not expect there to be such a solid record of Black Americans exercising and claiming rights before 1868.

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly phenomenal and path-breaking book, Birthright Citizens: History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America is highly recommended.

The author, Dr. Martha A. Jones, holds an endowed chair in the History Department of Johns Hopkins University. Before going to graduate school, she earned a law degree and worked in public interest law in New York City. These dual careers come to bear in this book.

In one regard, the book's title may be a bit overstated. The primary focus is upon unearthing the various ways in which free African Americans in antebellum Baltimore voiced and acted on the belief that being born in the United States meant that they were American citizens. This contested viewpoint presaged the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Yet the localized study is also set in the broader landscape promised by the title. For example, the books examines debates in public forums, Congress, local courts and government licensing agencies in Baltimore, newspapers, state constitutional conventions, and other places about whether African Americans were citizens and should have the rights of all other citizens.

In this regard, one of the most intriguing stories was the debates on this topic in the context of Congress' consideration of the entry of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state as part of the Compromise of 1820. I am somewhat surprised that I had not heard of this debate.

On the other hand, the book's thesis is not only well proven, but also fits with the scholarship about the response of free African Americans to the colonization movement of the entire period from the American Revolution's aftermath through the coming of the Civil War. A similar logic applies as an additional way of explaining African American resistance to being force out of their home states in the slave states after manumission in the same time periods.

A very well-written, well-researched, and convincing book.

[Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had been pretty excited to read this. I had been under the impression that it was about birthright citizenship in the US. What I didn't realize was that was a super specific look at the rights of former slaves throughout history from the courts to legislatures to personal conduct in their arguments that their birth made them citizens.

The book is obviously well researched but it's also a pretty specific topic. I honestly felt like this was a thesis converted to book form, which made it tough to read. I'm not sure how much of this is from my own personal lack of knowledge on the matter but I also really didn't think it was very well written, either.

For the right audience it could be an incredible resources or at least give a broader history.

For me, a library borrow was definitely best.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative history of the contested status of Black citizenship in early nineteenth century Maryland (particularly Baltimore), with a focus on legal rights, especially those related to travel and rights against expulsion. The prose is somewhat slow to get through at times (although not at all difficult to understand) but it's quite a short book so this isn't a huge issue

[Robert Tsai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review of Professor Jones's book, Birthright Citizens: bit.ly/RTJones

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longer review to come in a few days. Super fascinating!

[Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The audiobook is 9 hours for only 160 pages. If I could've made it triple speed then it would've been better but alas my technology didn't allow that.

As you see with a quote I typed in from when I was able to get a printed copy, this is the kind of book that can be condensing a lot of points tightly together. Basically if you read this book, then I recommend you read it in relation to various lawsuit topics available. In my case, I didn't do that at the start because "birthright" was an unfamiliar topic to me. I've heard it mainly used in treated kids as parental property called children. But, if you look at this for say employer exploitation, class warfare, then you're on to something, especially with the intersection of racism.

Personally, when it got into the paperwork part, I was like yes, this is why I get so defensive when people want to get rid of gender markers, as if not only the police are going to be transphobic regardless of whether my docs say or not, but also because there will still be transphobes attacking us regardless. So yeah, that experience of black people in Baltimore Maryland, combined with the credit "associational economy" hit home for me.

While I do want to say that maybe leaving USA would've been better, I can see from the human trafficking rampant in USA how that would seem dubious.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm puzzled by Martha Jones' book, and in particular by its title, and spent much of the book feeling like I was missing something. Jones examines the ways that freeborn Blacks did and did not inhabit the role of citizens in prewar Baltimore. Her contention, early in the text that freeborn Blacks took on the role of rights-holders by acting the part of rights-holders, suing and being sued, making contracts, and claiming their rights as sailors, was an interesting claim, and one that held up throughout the book. However, I don't know that any of her examples deepened my understanding or appreciation for the claim. There's more here than a short essay, but not enough for a book, and some of her examples feel like a case of using whatever evidence was at hand. It wasn't always clear to me why she was examining a particular court case, except that it happened in Baltimore, where she had access to courthouse records. I think her historical work was solid, but I simply wasn't interested enough in her topic to stay very engaged with the book.

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Rights” as used here refers to a process by which black Americans imagined, claimed, and enacted their relationship to law. Political theorist Bonnie Honig characterizes the assumption of rights and privileges by outsider subjects as a quintessentially democratic practice. Fundamental to democracy are the ways in which those said to be without rights make claims and “room for themselves.” Although Honig’s case is that of aliens, or noncitizens, her approach serves well a search for meaning in the rights claims of free people of color. Their rights making was messy, contested, and sometimes violent. How else, Honig asks, would those on the outside challenge the imbalance of power that framed such dynamics? Well before any judicial or legislative consensus granted their rights, free black men and women seized them, often in everyday claims that set them on a par with other rights-bearing persons.61 Only later did those rights become enshrined in text. In antebellum America, rights holders were those who did what rights holders did.

[Jake Kmiech · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting window into 19th century Baltimore and the struggle for rights in an era where citizenship was largely undefined. Draws some parallels with the current day, especially discussions of forced removal and the separation of families. The stories of activism that kept something close to citizenship alive in Maryland for free black Baltimorians, even after Dred Scott, are inspiring.

[Davina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at the period before the American Civil War in Baltimore and learning about the legal environment for free African Americans. There was so much to think about.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well illustrated stories of real life people bring to light Jones’ in-depth historical research in each chapter. Highly recommend!

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry but very well researched and written

[Katie Lovejoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

For class

[Katie ratherbereadinggg · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

[Brennan Lauritzen]

The people's-history-style is always hard on my retention skills. I do think it's important to recall society has had nuance at every point and who better to portray that than people.

[Eric Grunder · Rating 3 out of 5]

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to overturn what has been accepted law for more than 100 years: if you are born in the United States, you are a U.S citize, no matter the status of your parents. For decades most Americans assumed that legal position was sealed into law by the 14 Amendment, one of the three great amendments adopted in the wake of the Civil War. The Trump regime, as part of its anti-immigration agenda, claims the 14th Amendment is being misinterpreted, that it does not apply to every person born in the U.S. (technically, the first cases on this issue before the high court do not attack the 14th directly but challenge the right of federal district court judges to make decisions that apply nationwide),
Johns Hopkins historian Martha S. Jones' book, Birthright Citizens, traces arguments about citizenship in Antebellum America, specifically in Baltimore. Jones' concentration on Baltimore is her book's greatest strength. The city is rich with primary source material. But that concentration also is the book's greatest weakness. Birthrigth Citizens is history in microcosm. Jones sometimes gets so deep in the historic thicket, that the narrative is lost and readers can be left wondering if the arguments presented apply/applied outside Baltimore's boundaries. Still, the book is an important reminder that Trump is not the first person (and likely won't be the last) to question who qualifies as a U.S. citizen.