255 Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizenship

Published: Sept. 10, 2019, 5 a.m.

Who gets to be a citizen of the United States? How does the United States define who belongs to the nation?

Early Americans asked and grappled with these questions during the earliest days of the early republic.

Martha S. Jones is a Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and a former public interest litigator. Using details from her book, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, Martha joins us to investigate how early Americans thought about citizenship and how they defined who could and couldn’t belong to the United States.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/255


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