It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. I'm Bridget Bergen, in for Brian

today. And now we continue the Centennial series 100 Years of 100 Things.

And in honor of Black History Month, we'll dedicate this series to examining issues of racial inequality in the U.S.

We're up to thing number 66, the color line.

The term the color line was taken from an 1881 article by Frederick Douglass,

and it was originally used as a reference to racial segregation after the abolition of slavery. It's come to represent

the way people of color experience barriers in society. While it was only in 1967 that the

Supreme Court struck down state laws that banned interracial marriage, family histories have

shown that the color line between black and white ancestors were sometimes crossed, either through love or force.

Joining us now for this latest installment of our series is Martha Jones, legal and cultural historian at Johns Hopkins University.

Her forthcoming book examines her own family's long history along America's jagged color line and what that's meant for her,

her family, and the society at large. The book is titled, The Trouble of Color, an American

family memoir. Professor Jones, welcome to WNYC. The book is titled The Trouble of Color, an American Family Memoir.

Professor Jones, welcome to WNYC.

Thanks for having me, Bridget.

And listeners, as we always do with this series, we can take your oral histories.

We're going to open the phones now for families who have also dealt with mixed-race issues.

If you are biracial or part of a

biracial couple, we want to hear your stories. What sorts of challenges did you battle? What were

the triumphs? And maybe you thought you were either black or white, but with the popularity of

at-home ancestry kids, you found out otherwise.

Anyone out there been able to trace back their family history and discover something about your ancestors?

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