By Aaliyah Butler, Sarah Jones-Smith
On Monday, January 31, Howard University students joined award-winning author Nikole Hannah-Jones for a candid discussion about her new top-selling book, “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.” Hannah-Jones, the new Knight Chair in Race and Journalism and founder of the Center for Journalism and Democracy, also shared her goals as she begins teaching students at the renowned HBCU.
“I wanted to come home,” said Hannah-Jones. “Every time I am at Howard, I feel like I get light. I get sustenance. This community has embraced me, and I feel safe. To finally be in a place where you don’t have to think about your Blackness in the context of what it means to people who aren’t Black every second of the day. It’s impossible to describe it. The level of conversation is different.”
“The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” substantially expands on the New York Times Magazine’s award-winning issue weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic and citizenship to capitalism, religion and our democracy itself.
