Author Nikole Hannah-Jones’s conversation on The 1619 Project on Tuesday night at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall — part of the Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society — was a triumph.
Hannah-Jones is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and won a Pulitzer Prize as the creator of The 1619 Project. She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University and has earned a MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, and the National Magazine Award three times.
Hannah-Jones took the Portland audience on a career journey that began with her childhood in Waterloo, Iowa, and described herself as having been a “nerdy girl.” After graduating with a master’s degree in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she began her journalism career, which took her to working as a staff writer for The Oregonian and Pro Publica. While at The Oregonian Hannah-Jones was taught by Jack Hart, who showed her how to write compelling stories of real people who were affected by events in their lives. She mentioned that Portland and Oregon were challenging places for her to be as a Black reporter.
Hannah-Jones described her awakening about Black history while she was a high school student. She took a Black history class from a Black teacher named Ray Dial, a transformative educator who changed her life and allowed her to see things differently. He even encouraged Hannah-Jones to write for her high school newspaper, and that got her thinking about a career as a journalist. Being a student in Dial’s class introduced Hannah-Jones to Black history, literature, science and art that she had never read about before and believes it culminated in The 1619 Project.
She maintains that reading the book Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett in Dial’s class was also important in learning about Black history from its origins in western Africa, through the transatlantic journey, and slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the Civil Rights Movement. Today, she is an advocate for public schools, public libraries and public health programs. In particular, she believes that public schools are a democratizing force in the United States.
The main part of Hannah-Jones’s conversation discussed The 1619 Project itself, which is a collection of essays, poems, short fiction and photographs documenting the long reach of slavery in the United States. Her book begins in 1619, when the ship The White Lion landed on the shores of the British colony of Virginia in August with 20-30 Black captives from Africa. She emphasized that the landing of The White Lion has been erased from American history and replaced by the ship The Mayflower, which landed in the colonies in 1620.
Hannah-Jones maintains that The Mayflower story was about people seeking religious freedom, but The White Lion was in contrast a story “inconvenient” to the narrative. The White Lion was about forced captives who did not want to be in the colonies and were sold into slavery. It changed Hannah-Jones’s life, because it told her that Blacks had been in the colonies for many years and Black history had not been taught in schools.
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Hannah-Jones then made reference during her conversation to the era after Reconstruction called “the Nadir.” Rayford Logan, a historian at Howard University, used the term in his book The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901, written in 1954. She indicated that during Reconstruction, Black people got rights they never had enjoyed before, serving in government, building businesses, and going to school.
Within twelve years this era was over, resulting in the nadir or Jim Crow. Black Americans were stripped of all rights they had enjoyed before as a result of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It would take 80 years before Black citizens would get these rights back, with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today, Hannah-Jones said, her 14-year-old daughter enjoys fewer individual rights than she herself did as a young woman due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and efforts to dismantle voting rights for Black citizens.
Hannah-Jones was especially critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to target transgender people and immigrants. She believes that the Trump administration will not stop at going after only transgender people and immigrants, and will select other groups to target. She said that Black people have always known that, and fought for all people’s rights. She believes that when one group loses its rights, we could all lose our individual rights.
When Hannah-Jones was asked to identify “light sources,” she mentioned having allies and honest conversations with each other. She said many efforts were made to discredit The 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones believes that when one is on top everyone supports you, but when you are fighting for recognition, you fight alone. She mentioned that she has had support from anonymous people who send her supportive messages. During the tough times, she thought about her ancestors, particularly her grandmother, who was raised in Mississippi and was not allowed to go to hospitals, libraries, etc. She believes that she has a personal debt to her ancestors.
Hannah-Jones made reference to the famous Black abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass. In her view, Douglass was the greatest American, because he had to overcome enormous obstacles such as being born into slavery and not being well-educated. Instead, through sheer force of will and intellect, he learned to read and was largely self-taught. He escaped from slavery and went on speaking tours in the United States, Ireland, Scotland, and England. Hannah-Jones believes that Douglas was fiery and determined to help Blacks in the United States by speaking against slavery and for individual rights. He was also in favor of women’s suffrage.
Hannah-Jones told several personal stories, revealing that she came from humble roots and was part of a poor family in a blue-collar town. She had always wanted to go to college and was encouraged to do so by her family. She was ambitious, and when she was working for The New York Times Magazine made a pitch to the editors for The 1619 Project. Her pitch was successful, and The 1619 Project was serialized in The New York Times Magazine and published as a book in 2019. Hannah-Jones’s advice to the audience was not only to work hard but also to put yourself in a position that, when you get a chance, you can execute it.
Hannah-Jones ended her conversation by saying that the United States is at an inflection point in its history. In 2020, she believed that the United States was at an inflection point after the recognition of Black people and rights after the murder of George Floyd. In 2025, she believes, we are at another inflection point, and she maintains that unless we do something, things will not change.
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Hannah-Jones believes that we can do better as Americans. She maintains that we need to understand that the United States can still take care of its poor and middle classes and the wealthy will still be able to make money. The 1619 Project has been built to show the history of Black America, and we can build ourselves, but time is short, she said. She believes that if Americans do not do something, it will be a very long time before we will be able to change things back to normal due to the efforts of the Trump administration to attack various groups and eliminate rights in the United States.
Hannah-Jones’s presentation was excellent, and showed the audience the importance of Black history that too often has been ignored or erased. She told personal stories of her roots, her career trajectory, and her successful efforts with The 1619 Project. Her presentation was timely, informative, and sincere, and for that we should all be grateful.
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