“You were not supposed to show off in Negroland because you are supposed to be perfectly decorous and well behaved. You were also not supposed to tell any stories that reflected badly on the group because that reflected badly on the race. I use past tense, but it still feels like present tense.”

American writer and academic

Margo Jefferson is an American writer, academic, and journalist known for her criticism. She was writing for The New York Times from 1993 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995. Her work has also appeared in Vogue, New York Magazine, The Nation, and Guernica. She is known for cultural criticism and essays that move across literature, art, and public life.