Jacqueline Jones: MacArthur Fellow
Lively, warm, straightforward, Jacqueline Jones, Truman Professor of American Civilization, is ensconced in her airy, welcoming, book-lined office, explaining how she learned early on to focus her extraordinary energy and intense curiosity into hugely productive hours.
A 1999 winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a "Genius Grant," Jones received the call on her birthday. "I was thrilled," she says, but declined to take time off right away. "I think I will take time off in a few years, but I really like being here on campus, being around my colleagues, teaching."
Jones teaches and studies the history of African Americans, labor, women, family, and the South. She is currently most interested in labor history, and the way that large-scale economic transformations affect ordinary workers. "I usually begin a book with a question and try to find the answer," she says. The completion of each book spawns yet another question, and Jones is off and running again. Her first book, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 (University of North Carolina Press, 1980), focused on teachers who went South after the Civil War to teach blacks. She became interested in the history of black working women, which became Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (Basic Books, 1985). That led her to an interest in poor whites, which was the topic of her third book, The Dispossessed, America's Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present (Basic Books, 1992). From there the racial division of labor-how certain groups get assigned certain kinds of work-became her fourth book, American Work, published in 1998.
Now she has just completed a book about growing up in Delaware in the 1950s, a project she describes as an entirely new venture for her: a memoir, history, and current analysis of Delaware.
"I look at this little town I grew up in, and I consider how it has evolved over the last 400 years. Then I put my family into the context of this story in the 1950s," she explains. The book is focused on Jones's first 12 years, ending in 1960. But last year she returned, to interview current students in her elementary school, which is now named after her father, a self-made man who was head of the Delaware school board for many years. "I ended my story in 1960, but I added an epilogue about what kids in the town today were doing," she says.
Jones loves the creative process of writing about something she cares about, which is relevant to the way people live today. "I am writing about issues of race and class and how the United States has changed over the years, how different groups have viewed each other and interacted, how certain groups have been assigned certain kinds of work," she explains.
And how does she tackle these daunting projects? "I really like rummaging around in the library. I begin by reading widely, looking for patterns. I then go back to original sources and try to put the pieces together. I construct elaborate outlines, so when it is time to sit down and write I have all the thoughts and structure right there," she explains.
With teaching experience at Wellesley College and Brown University, Jones was delighted to come to Brandeis. "This is a very lively place. There is a lot going on intellectually and the department is very distinguished. I had my first chance to work with graduate students, in an excellent graduate program. In fact, the American history program is really wonderful," she says. "I enjoy Brandeis very much. It is a vital and interesting place. I think it has been good for my work and good for my teaching."