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Nikole Sheri HANNAH-JONES, Waterloo, INDIANA
Nikole Sheri HANNAH–JONES was born on 09 April 1976 in Waterloo, INDIANA. She is an African American investigative journalist, known for her coverage of civil rights in the United States. In April 2015, she became a staff writer for The New York Times. In 2017 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and in 2020 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the controversial 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones is the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at the Howard University School of Communications, where she also founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy.
Nikole HANNAH-JONES is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and creator of the landmark 1619 Project.
The New York Times’s 1619 Project commemorates the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in what would become the United States by examining slavery’s modern legacy and reframing the way we understand this history and the contributions of black Americans to the nation. Nikole’s lead essay, “Our Democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.
The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative.” The first publication stemming from the project was in The New York Times Magazine of August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia. These were also the first Africans in mainland British America, though Africans had been in other parts of North America since the 1500s. The project also developed an educational curriculum, supported by the Pulitzer Center, later accompanied by a broadsheet article, live events, and a podcast. On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize board announced that they were awarding the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary to project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones for her introductory essay.
The 1619 Project has received criticism from many historians, who question its historical accuracy. In a letter published in The New York Times in December 2019, historians Gordon S. Wood, James M. McPherson, Sean Wilentz, Victoria E. Bynum, and James Oakes expressed “strong reservations” about the project and requested factual corrections, accusing the project’s creators of putting ideology before historical understanding. The scholars denied the project’s claim that slavery was essential to the beginning of the American Revolution, as colonists wanted to protect their right to own slaves. In response, Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, defended its accuracy and declined to issue corrections. In March 2020, after continued criticism of the project’s portrayal of the role of slavery, The Times issued a “clarification”, modifying one of the passages on slavery’s role that had sparked controversy.
In September 2020, controversy arose over when the Times updated the opening text of the project website to remove the phrase “understanding 1619 as our true founding” without accompanying editorial notes. Critics, including Bret Stephens of the Times, claimed the differences showed that the newspaper was backing away from some of the initiative’s more controversial claims. The Times defended its practices, with Hannah-Jones emphasizing how most of the project’s content has remained unchanged.
The project has also led to responses from politicians. Former California United States Senator and future vice president Kamala Harris expressed praise for the project, while then-president Donald Trump expressed uncertainty about the project’s goals of rehashing select parts of history. In late 2020, upon learning of a claim that the California Department of Education was adding the project to the state curriculum, Trump noted that if true, federal funding would be withheld from the state’s schools. Shortly after, his administration announced the 1776 Commission, whose goal was developing a “patriotic” curriculum. The commission was terminated by his successor, Joe Biden, on his first day in office. Florida governor Ron DeSantis passed a bill in July 2021 barring the teaching of critical race theory, including any materials from the 1619 Project.
She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021, into the North Carolina Media Hall of Fame. Nikole was named as one of The Most Influential People in 2021 by Time Magazine.
In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of reporters and editors of color. She holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina and earned her Bachelor of Arts in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame. Hannah-Jones is the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she has founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy.
Nikole also has written extensively about school resegregation across the country and chronicled the decades-long failure of the federal government to enforce the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act.
#BlackShero
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