Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

O'Mahandro Institute. Hello and welcome to episode 255 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart. Who gets to be a citizen of the United States?

How does the United States define who belongs to the nation?

These questions may sound like it borrowed a few headlines from today's news outlets, because

the questions we regularly ask ourselves. But there are also questions that early Americans

ask themselves in the earliest days of the early republic. In the early United

States, the question of who belongs and who could belong to the new nation was a

fraught question,

especially in a nation practicing racialized slavery.

But the question of citizenship, who belongs and who could belong to the

early United States, is a really important question.

So we're bringing in an expert to help us investigate how early Americans viewed citizenship.

Our expert is Martha S Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University,

and a former public interest litigator.

Martha's most recent book, Birth Rights Citizens,

a history of race and rights in Antibellum America,

investigates how early Americans thought about citizenship, and the ways in which free African Americans asserted and fought for their inclusion as full citizens of the United States.

Now, as we explore early American ideas about citizenship, Martha reveals the notion of birthright citizenship and how it entered early American thinking about citizenship.

What the United States Constitution has to say about citizenship,

and details about how early Americans thought about national belonging,

...