Nikole Hannah Jones, known for her coverage of the civil rights movement is a staff writer for The New York Times. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who published the very impactful controversial The1619 Project, which details the harsh truth and realities of the black experience during slavery.
The book was a bestseller. It was a groundbreaking collection of essays and poems on race that first appeared in a special issue of The New York Times Magazine in 2019. Now in book form, the project has become a history book as a timeline during slavery. The impact of the book has stirred up plenty of conversations.
I wanted to see what this prominent woman has been up to these days since publishing the book. Last year, Hannah-Jones was appointed the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at her alma mater, U.N.C’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
Because of the backlash that the 1619 Project received, the Board of Trustees at then University of North Carolina denied her tenure, instead offering her a five-year contract as a professor. The trustees eventually reversed the decision but Hannah-Jones felt insulted and declined the offer. She is now at Howard University where she is the Inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Reporting.
It doesn’t stop there for the award-winning journalist. She has been working hard behind the scenes. A TV documentary on the 1619 Project work is due out later this year and will stream on Hulu. She is also currently writing a book on school segregation called The Problem We All Live With. This book will be published on the One World imprint of Penguin/Random House.
Just last week, she scolded Al Sharpton for criticizing New York about petty shoplifting after a man went viral for shoplifting 10 steaks out of Trader Jones. “A person stealing steak is not national news” says Nikole Hannah-Jones. She believes we need to focus our intentions on important stories such as racial injustices. Nikole Hannah-Jones feels the contributions of black people are constantly left out of history, and she will constantly be an advocate of African Americans to make sure these stories are told.