Nikole Hannah-Jones Reflects on the Most Important Historical Project of Our Generation

Feature image by Jason Hill.

The 1619 Project has arguably become our generation’s foundational text for understanding the conception of America as we know it today through its continued legislative, cultural, and physical exploitation of Black Americans. What initially began as a 100-page spread in The New York Times Magazine, the contributors of the project made the argument that the founding of the country we now know as America did not begin with the Revolutionary War in 1776, but when the first enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Since its initial publication in 2019, the project has received both immeasurable acclaim and backlash. For every effort that has been made to get the project in the hands of the general public, there have been communal and congressional efforts made to ban it.

Aside from the project itself, no one has faced more scrutiny than its creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones. The publication of the project is the culmination of a twenty-plus-year career in journalism which resulted in her winning a Pulitzer Prize and becoming a Macarthur Genius Grant recipient. Jones is currently an investigative reporter who covers civil rights and racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and is the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University where she is the founding director of the Center for Journalism & Democracy. I got the chance to speak with Jones on her current book tour stop in Atlanta for the promotion of the paperback edition of the book-length version of the project where we discussed, her career, the project’s continued evolution, and its future.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

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Channler Twyman: Over the past five years since its original publication in The New York Times Magazine, the project has undergone several iterations. In what ways has the project’s continued impact on our literary and social culture surprised you over the past half-decade?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: God, I think almost everything about how this project has gone out into the world has surprised me. I couldn’t have predicted that five years later, I’d still be working every day on the 1619 project—still going on across the country talking about it. I certainly didn’t expect to produce a documentary, podcasts or a children’s book. Also, there are the book bans, legislation targeting the project and all of that that came with it. So, I think everything that’s happened the past five years has been surprising.

CT: The project chronicles Black people’s history of active resistance before this country’s conception. How do you believe the project actively contributes to this legacy of documented resistance against America’s violence against its most vulnerable citizens?

NHJ: We can look at the political climate in the United States and see why the book must exist. The people who are implementing book bans and passing these divisive concept laws trying to make it difficult for children to learn about the history of race and racism, challenging LGBTQ titles, banning DEI initiatives–they’re doing all of this because they understand the power of narrative and who gets to control how we think about our country and what our country was founded on, and how that foundation still shapes and corrupts the society that we live in. Everything that we’re seeing is a testament to why this project exists. It adds to the continued struggle, most often led by Black Americans, to manifest this country’s highest ideals. When we first published the project in 2019, the argument was that we should not think of 1776 as our origin but 1619 because the practice of slavery predates the ideals of liberty. I think that is the kind of foundational struggle of American life and we see it clearly in this election that’s upcoming and across our society.

CT: How has the project’s continued evolution and reception changed you as both a writer and a journalist?

NHJ: The biggest change, obviously, is I’ve now become a symbol. I started my career as a print journalist and newspaper reporter in the nascent days of the internet when you really didn’t expect anyone to know who you were. I was just writing and reporting because this is what I was called to do. So, to now have gotten to the place where I’m a symbol for people who both love my work and hate my work, it’s unusual. There are certainly stories I don’t think I can cover anymore. There are people who won’t talk to me when I try to report a story, I sometimes now find that I affect the story. So, when I show up to report on the story, sometimes things change before my reporting is even over. So yeah, almost everything about my career has changed in the last five years, and it’s crazy because I’ve been a journalist for 20 years.

I’ve written at the New York Times now for almost 10 years. And I’ve always written about racial inequality. Mostly about what was happening right now. But it was this project that really tries to delve into our past that seems to have transformed everything.

CT: Absolutely, I’m sure you’ve had to re-evaluate your relationship with your own work!

NHJ: If you followed me on twitter in 2019 vs NHJ in 2024 you’ll see that I have evolved. It took a really long time to recognize that I was no longer NHJ with 200 followers. I never expected something that I would just tweet would become a whole news story—that Fox News would have an entire reporter assigned to my Twitter account. So, I do I have to be much more circumspect, much more conscious that I, myself, am a news story. It’s disconcerting as a journalist. But then I come to something like this and see all of these regular folks who want to spend time on a Sunday talking about these really challenging topics. And it just affirms why I became a journalist in the first place.

CT: Why do you think the project has had such a long shelf life in our cultural memory?

NHJ: Because our country is crazy as hell! (Laughs) I have two answers. One, I hope it’s because the conceit of the project has always been that this history that we have not been taught, explains the society that we live in. People call this a history project, but it’s a work of journalism. Every essay is about America today and saying, actually, this slavery, this system of slavery, built this thing that you’re seeing today. We’re in Atlanta, right? The traffic essay is about why you can sit in Atlanta traffic and see your exit and it takes you 40 minutes to get to it—that there’s a history behind that. I think for folks who didn’t understand the way that history was shaping our society today, and certainly, who have never been taught the history of race, racism, or slavery has been very powerful. But I also think it was timing.

The project may have had a different reception if it came out under the Obama administration when so many Americans, particularly white Americans, wanted to believe we were “post-racial,” but the project came out, under Trump. In this period of whiplash in society, where we go from the first Black president to a pretty openly white nationalist president. People wanted to understand how we got here. Then a few months after the project comes out, we get George Floyd. Many people understood a society led to that moment, not just that one white cop, but an entire society.

Republicans losing their damn minds over the book have also helped sell a lot of books. They helped keep this project relevant because they’re so afraid of it. Every time Donald Trump would dismiss the project, or a bill would come up attacking the project, or a politician like Mitch McConnell, or Tom Cotton would say something negative about the project. They’re only actually increasing its power because it makes people want to understand what is this thing that they’re so afraid of. We become journalists because we understand the power of what we do to shape narratives—to shape understanding. And I think because of this book, because of the caliber of the writers, the historians, the arguments, it has become its own phenomenon.

CT:  With the release of the paperback edition, it’s apparent that the project continues to keep evolving and take on a new life with each new iteration. How do you wish to see it continue to expand?

NHJ: We’re actually working on the 1619 art book that’s going to come out in the fall. We commissioned 18 original artworks from artists and photo galleries and included some of the essays. It’s a book where you can just sit with the visuals. We’re also working on a middle-grade book, and we’re working on a graphic novel so there will be more iterations. One thing that I’ve learned since the project came out, is that every different iteration of the project, expands your audience. When the project first came out, as a print, magazine, we also had the podcast. And to this day, most young people I talked to think the 1619 project is a podcast.

The documentary reached more people like my family back home, who like, most Americans are not reading 10,000-word essays. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want the information. So that’s kind of been like the great joy of this project is being able to see it take so many different forms. And then we’re working on other kinds of TV and film projects that are adjacent to the 1619 project.

I think that what we were actually able to show is that Americans do want to understand and it doesn’t have to be dry and boring and disconnected from the lives they live. So, I don’t know when the 1619 project will end. It’s just been amazing to think that it’s been five years.

CT: Anything else you’d like to say to our readers and supporters of your work?

NHJ: I’m grateful. I’m just grateful for every type of American. In five years, I’ve heard from 80-year-old white women in Mississippi and an 11-year-old child in Newark Public Schools to an Indian American immigrant in Philadelphia, who have seen themselves in the story and understood themselves in the story. And, you know, we’re here in Georgia, during a pivotal election year. In some ways, Georgia symbolizes that struggle of what America would want to be right? A former slave state, one of the most heavily black states in the country. A state that also targeted the 1619 project, I think Cobb County Schools right up the road banned the 1619 project from being taught. But also this is where black women delivered and saved democracy two years ago, and so it just seems so relevant. You know, you asked the question about the themes of resistance.

To me, the 1619 project, even though it is looking at the past, provides a roadmap forward, because it shows that black Americans have been, and I would argue, continue to be the greatest democratizing force this country has ever seen. That it is black resistance that has given us democracy. It will be Black resistance, that saves democracy if democracy is to be saved. If all Americans can kind of look to that willingness to sacrifice for our country, even when the country does not love you, they would have a true understanding of patriotism, and what it actually takes to be an American. So yeah, that’s the thing I would add. I’m just very conscious of where I am in this moment.

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The 1619 Project is available now in paperback.