New Books In American Studies

Martha S. Jones, in her excellent new book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America(Cambridge University Press, 2018), weaves together the legal and constitutional dimensions of citizenship—from the Founding documents and law cases with which  many scholars and students are familiar—with the daily civic engagement of African-Americans as they took part in public life and the rights of citizens. This political, historical, and legal analysis focuses particularly on the antebellum experiences of black Americans in Baltimore, Maryland, just miles from the U.S. Capital, but also vital as the largest free black community in the U.S. in one of the largest cities in the United States before the Civil War. Birthright Citizens takes the question of what defines and makes an individual a citizen, legally, and how that is performed and engaged in a granular or daily way, and delves into the historical record of black Americans in Baltimore, exploring how individuals took on the qualities a