Nikole Hannah-Jones

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist whose reporting examines education, housing, racial inequality, and policy's lived effects. The 1619 Project grew from a special issue of The New York Times Magazine that she developed to reconsider United States history through slavery and its continuing effects. One World issued the expanded 2021 volume as The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Hannah-Jones created the book with the magazine and edited it alongside Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein. Its structure combines eighteen essays with poems and short fiction, assigning each section a historical subject and a present-day legacy. That collaborative form makes Hannah-Jones both a contributor and an organizing editorial voice. Her opening essay frames 1619 as a date through which readers can question familiar national narratives, while the remaining writers bring perspectives from history, law, economics, culture, and literature to the same inquiry.