‘The 1619 Project’ creator is coming to Charlotte’s HBCU. How to join the conversation.
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Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who created “The 1619 Project, will be the featured speaker at Johnson C. Smith University on Thursday.
Hannah-Jones is making her first visit to the Charlotte HBCU and will speak with students and the public during the Lyceum Engagement lecture series, school officials said.
The discussion will focus on “The 1619 Project,” a collection of essays, poems, images, podcasts and other multimedia that recasts the narrative of the arrival of the first Africans to English North America through a modern lens. The work was originally published in 2019, in advance of the 400th anniversary of that arrival.
A professor at Howard University and founder of the Center for Journalism & Democracy, Hannah-Jones has focused extensively on racial inequity and injustice in her journalism. In the past few years, she has visited several historic Black colleges and universities to share her insight and life’s work.
The discussion will also focus on how HBCU students can get involved with social justice and what happened with her former tenure at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where Hannah-Jones also earned a master of arts in mass communications.
Other topics of discussion may include the recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action college admission policies and economic mobility. Hannah-Jones recently penned an essay for the New York Times called “The Colorblindness Trap,” which explores how a 50-year campaign undermined the progress of the civil rights movement.
In 2020, Hannah-Jones won journalism’s top award in commentary for “The 1619 Project.” The collection focused on how those past events continue to have a long-term effect on modern society and our nation’s view of race. The original content has been transformed into books including “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” and a children’s edition, “Born on the Water.” The content also appears as a six-part docuseries on Hulu.
Stacked with accolades, Hannah-Jones is the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which strives to boost the ranks of investigative reporters and editors of color. In 2022, she opened the 1619 Freedom School, a free after-school literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. To this list, we can add a MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and numerous National Magazine awards.
That aside, the wife and mother is passionate about educating everyone and helping people make connections about how history affects us.
Hannah-Jones has previously shared her back story growing up in Waterloo and what inspired her — including the book “Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962” by Lerone Bennett. She read that book during a high school history class, which first sparked her interest in the year 1619.
Want to go
What: A Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones.
When: 5 p.m., Thurs., March 21.
Where: Gambrell Auditorium, Henry J. Biddle Hall, Johnson C. Smith University, 100 Beatties Ford Rd.
Free to the public, but parking is available on a first-come, first-serve basis in Biddle Hall parking lot, the Band Room lot and New Science Center lot.
Please RSVP to gallison@jcsu.edu
