Nikole Hannah-Jones

In 2015, she became a staff reporter for The New York Times.[5] Hannah-Jones wrote the first essay published in the 1619 Project, "an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019 . . . [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 our national narrative."[18]

Hannah-Jones has written about topics such as racial segregation, desegregation and resegregation in American schools[19][20] and housing discrimination, and has spoken about these issues on national public radio broadcasts.[21][22]

She writes to discover and expose the systemic and institutional racism perpetuated by official laws and acts.[23]

Her stories have been quoted in numerous other publications as being particularly important regarding race relations.[24] Hannah-Jones reported on the school district where teenager Michael Brown had been shot, one of the "most segregated, impoverished districts in the entire state" of Missouri.[25][26] Reviewer Laura Moser of Slate magazine praised her report on school resegregation, which showed how educational inequality may have been a factor in the unfortunate death of Brown.[27]

Hannah-Jones is a 2017 Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation,[28] where she is working on a book on school segregation.[29] The book, The Problem We All Live With, is due out in June 2020 from Chris Jackson's One World imprint at Random House.[30]

Hannah-Jones is a 2017 award winner of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award."[31]

In 2019, Hannah-Jones launched the New York Times' 1619 Project with the goal of re-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States and timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.[4] The project featured contributions by the paper's writers, including essays on the history of different aspects of contemporary American life which the authors believe have "roots in slavery and its aftermath." It also includes poems, short fiction, and a photo essay. Originally conceived of as a special issue for August 20, 2019, it was soon turned into a full-fledged project, including a special broadsheet section in the newspaper, live events, and a multi-episode podcast series.

In 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her work on The 1619 Project.[32][33]

Some of the assertions made by Hannah-Jones' in the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 project have been disputed by historians, whose concerns were published in a letter to The New York Times. New York Times Editor-in-Chief Jake Silverstein responded to and disputed some of the concerns listed in the letter.

Hannah-Jones' claim that “the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America” has been disputed by Northwestern University history professor Leslie M. Harris, who published a rebuttal in Politico stating that "Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.[35]

In June 2020, Hannah-Jones received criticism for quote-tweeting a Twitter thread that detailed a widely-circulated conspiracy theory claiming that the noticeable uptick in firework shows in Brooklyn and Queens were part of "a coordinated attack on Black and Brown communities by government forces".[36] Hannah-Jones later deleted the quote-tweet and apologized in an interview with the National Review, stating that the tweet was "an irresponsible use of my platform and beneath my own standards, which is why I deleted [it]".[37]

On June 25, 2020 the conservative website The Federalist discovered an op-ed that Hannah-Jones had published as a student at the University of Notre Dame.[38] In the November 21, 1995 issue of The Observer, Hannah-Jones wrote an op-ed titled “Modern Savagery” in which she accused the “white race” of being the “biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.” She continued that that “Christopher Columbus and those like him were no different then [sic] Hitler.” Hannah-Jones argued that “Africans had been to the Americas long before Columbus or any Europeans. The difference is that Africans had the decency and respect for human life to learn from the Native Americans and trade technology with them. The pyramids of the Aztecs and the great stone heads of the Olmecs are lasting monuments to the friendship of these two peoples.” Returning to the crimes of the “white race,” Hannah-Jones continued, “Even today, the descendants of these savage people pump drugs and guns into the Black community, pack Black people into the squalor of segregated urban ghettos, and continue to [sic] be bloodsuckers in our communities. Yet, it was Columbus that set the platforms for these racist American institutions.” She concluded, “But after everything that those barbaric devils did, I do not hate them or their descendants.”[39]