The AP Interview: Nikole Hannah-Jones' warning on democracy
ABC News
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Pulitzer Prize-winning Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said she is clear-eyed about her mission to force a reckoning around the nation’s self-image
NEW YORK -- Following a year of professional milestones born of her work on America’s history of slavery, Pulitzer Prize-winning Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said she is clear-eyed about her mission to force a reckoning around the nation’s self-image.
The New York Times Magazine writer began this year in a protracted tenure fight with her alma mater in North Carolina — the dispute ended when she announced in July that she’d take her talents to a historically Black university — and is closing it as a national best-selling author.
“I’ve gone from being just a journalist to becoming some sort of symbol for people who either love me and my work or revile me and my work,” she said.
Hannah-Jones recently spoke to The Associated Press in an exclusive interview about the ongoing controversy over The 1619 Project, a groundbreaking collection of essays on race that first appeared in a special issue of The New York Times Magazine in 2019. Now in book form, the project has become a touchstone for America’s reckoning over slavery and the reverberations for Black Americans.