Well Said

When Nikole Hannah-Jones ’03 (MA) was in high school, she became obsessed with one year: 1619 — the year African slaves were first transported to an English-speaking colony in the Americas. As the 400th anniversary of that voyage was approaching, Hannah-Jones found herself at the New York Times Magazine, where she works as an investigative reporter. She pitched a project to re-examine the legacy of slavery in this country tied to that event. “I feel like my whole career and, in some ways, my whole life was geared toward this moment,” said Hannah-Jones, who received her graduate degree from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Her 1619 Project debuted in August with essays, poems, short fiction, a photo essay and an audio series, and they all work together to build a case that slavery is one of the foundational elements of the country’s development. “We can’t understand why things are like they are in the country until we grapple with the fact that slavery is at our foundations,” she said. Sign