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Nikole Hannah-Jones

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Nikole Hannah-Jones
Born
Nikole Sheri Hannah

(1976-04-09) April 9, 1976 (age 48)
Waterloo, Iowa, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Notre Dame (BA)
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (MA)
OccupationJournalist
Years active2003–present
Known forInvestigative journalism
SpouseFaraji Hannah-Jones
Children1
AwardsMacArthur Fellowship (2017)
Pulitzer Prize (2020)

Nikole Sheri Hannah-Jones (born April 9, 1976)[1][2] is an American investigative journalist known for her coverage of civil rights in the United States. In April 2015, she became a staff writer for The New York Times. In 2017 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and in 2020 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on The 1619 Project.

Early life

Hannah-Jones was born in Waterloo, Iowa, to father Milton Hannah, who is African-American, and mother Cheryl A. Novotny, who is white and of Czech and English descent.[3] Hannah-Jones is the second of three sisters.[4] In 1947 Hannah-Jones' father, at the age of two, along with his mother and older brother, left Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region, heading north by train to Iowa, as did many other African-American families, determined to avoid a life of "picking cotton in the feudal society that was the Mississippi Delta".[5]

Hannah-Jones and her sister attended almost all-white schools as part of a voluntary program of desegregation busing.[6] She attended Waterloo West High School, where she wrote for the high school newspaper and graduated in 1994.[7]

Hannah-Jones earned a bachelor's degree in History and African-American Studies from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in 1998.

She graduated from the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media with a master's degree in 2003, where she was a Roy H. Park Fellow.[8][9]

Career

In 2003, Hannah-Jones began her career covering the education beat, which included the predominantly African American Durham Public Schools, for the Raleigh News & Observer, a position she held for three years.[6]

In 2006, Hannah-Jones moved to Portland, Oregon, where she wrote for The Oregonian for six years. During this time she covered an enterprise assignment that included feature work, then the demographics beat, and then the government & census beats.[3]

In 2007, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Watts riots, Hannah-Jones wrote about its impact on the community for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission.[10]

From 2008 to 2009, Hannah-Jones received a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies which enabled her to travel to Cuba to study universal healthcare and Cuba's educational system under Raul Castro.[11][12]

In 2011, she joined the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which is based in New York City, where she covered civil rights and continued research she started in Oregon on redlining and in-depth investigative reporting on the lack of enforcement of the Fair Housing Act for minorities.[13] Hannah-Jones also spent time in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the decision in Brown v. Board of Education had little effect.[14]

Hannah-Jones was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.[15]

Hannah-Jones with attendees after giving a talk in Rochester, New York

The New York Times

In 2015, Hannah-Jones became a staff reporter for The New York Times.[16]

Hannah-Jones has written about topics such as racial segregation, desegregation and resegregation in American schools[17][18] and housing discrimination, and has spoken about these issues on national public radio broadcasts.[19][20]

She writes to discover and expose the systemic and institutional racism that she says are perpetuated by official laws and acts.[21]

Her work on racial inequalities has been particularly influential and is cited widely.[22] Hannah-Jones reported on the school district where teenager Michael Brown had been shot, one of the "most segregated, impoverished districts in the entire state" of Missouri.[23][24] Reviewer Laura Moser of Slate magazine praised her report on school resegregation, which showed how educational inequality may have been a factor in the unfortunate death of Brown.[25]

Hannah-Jones was a 2017 Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation,[26] where she worked on a book on school segregation.[27] The book, The Problem We All Live With, is due out in June 2020 from Chris Jackson's One World imprint at Random House.[28]

Hannah-Jones is a 2017 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation fellowship.[29] The award cited her “ Chronicling the persistence of racial segregation in American society, particularly in education, and reshaping national conversations around education reform.”[30]

1619 Project

Main article: The 1619 Project

In 2019, Hannah-Jones launched a project to re-examine the legacy of slavery in the United States, timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.[31] Hannah-Jones produced a series of articles for a special issue of The New York Times Magazine titled The 1619 Project.[32] The ongoing initiative began August 14, 2019 and "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." [33] The project featured essays by a combination of staff writers and academics including Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse, Harvard-trained lawyer Bryan Stevenson, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, and SUNY historian Anne Bailey. In the opening essay, Hannah-Jones wrote "No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed." The project also included poems, short fiction, and a photo essay. Originally conceived of as a special issue, it was soon turned into a full-fledged project, including a special broadsheet section in the newspaper, live events, and a multi-episode podcast series.

In 2020, Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the 1619 Project.[34] The award cited her “sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.”[35] Her paper was criticized by historians Gordon S. Wood and Leslie M. Harris, specifically for asserting that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery."[36][37][38] The article was “clarified” in March 2020 to read "for some of the colonists".[39] There was also debate around whether the project suggested the nation was founded in 1619 with the arrival of enslaved Africans rather than in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence.[40][41][42] Speaking to New York Times opinion writer Bret Stephens, Hannah-Jones said the suggestion of considering 1619 as a jumping-off point for interpreting US history had always been so self-evidently metaphorical that it went without saying.[43]

New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute named the 1619 Project as one of the 10 greatest works of journalism in the decade from 2010 to 2019.[44]

University of North Carolina

In April 2021, the University of North Carolina announced Hannah-Jones would join the Hussman School of Journalism and Media in July 2021 as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, typically a tenured position.[45] Following criticism, particularly from conservative groups who expressed disagreement with the 1619 Project and questioned Hannah-Jones's credentials, the University Board of Trustees made the unprecedented decision not to follow the tenure committee's recommendation to approve her application for tenure.[46][47] The university announced they would instead offer a fixed five-year contract. The decision faced backlash from faculty members at the Journalism school, more than 40 of whom signed a statement claiming that UNC "unfairly moves the goal posts" by not offering her tenure. The decision also evoked significant uproar from university students, with students of color organizing petitions and protests regarding her tenure.[48][49] The last two people to be given this position were granted tenure upon their appointment.[50] In late June of 2021, Hannah-Jones, via a letter from her lawyers, said she will not take a faculty position with the university unless it is offered as a tenured position. [51]

Controversies and criticism

Criticism of the 1619 Project

Five historians wrote to the New York Times Magazine to ask the creators of its 1619 Project to issue corrections, including for Hannah-Jones's assertions on the American Revolution and on Lincoln. The correction request was signed by Victoria Bynum of Texas State University, James M. McPherson and Sean Wilentz of Princeton University, James Oakes of the City University of New York, and Gordon S. Wood of Brown University.[52]

Alleged doxing of reporter

A Washington Free Beacon reporter highlighted a tweet from Hannah-Jones from May 2016 in which she quoted someone using the N-word. After being asked for comment, Hannah-Jones posted the reporter's inquiry, which contained his work phone number, on Twitter.[53]

When someone noted that she had posted his phone number, Hannah-Jones did not immediately delete her tweet.[53]

In an interview with Slate, Hannah-Jones said, "I didn’t realize I was tweeting out his phone number, and when someone mentioned it, I should have deleted it. So absolutely. I did not intend to do that, and I wish that I hadn’t."[53]

Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting

In early 2015, Nikole Hannah-Jones, along with Ron Nixon, Corey Johnson, and Topher Sanders, began dreaming of creating the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting.[54] This organization was launched in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2016, with the purpose of promoting investigative journalism, which is the least common type of reporting.[54] Following in the footsteps of Ida B. Wells, this society encourages minority journalists to expose injustices perpetuated by the government and defend people who are susceptible to being taken advantage of.[54] This organization was created with much support from the Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.[54]

Personal life

Hannah-Jones lives in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn with her husband, Faraji Hannah-Jones, and their daughter.[55]

Awards

Works

  • Hannah-Jones, Nikole (2012). Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law. New York: ProPublica. ISBN 978-1-453-25444-8. OCLC 825553231.

References

  1. ^ Deutch, Gabrielle (April 2, 2018). "Writer Hannah-Jones discusses black education, segregation, and privilege". YaleNews. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  2. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (April 9, 2019). "It's my birthday today and I really want you to celebrate with me by watching this amazing documentary on Reconstruction that I had the honor of taking part in. And, yes, I was born on the anniversary of the end of the Civil War. I mean, of course". Twitter. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  3. ^ a b Rede, George (January 17, 2009). "Two faces of the black American experience". The Oregonian. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  4. ^ "Life Legacy: Milton Hannah". Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  5. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (July 8, 2014). "Ghosts of Greenwood". ProPublica. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  6. ^ a b Glass, Ira; Hannah-Jones, Nikole (July 31, 2015). "562: The Problem We All Live With". This American Life. WBEZ. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  7. ^ "About". Nikole Hannah-Jones. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  8. ^ McCoy, Nilagia (October 15, 2015). "Investigating racial injustice with Nikole Hannah-Jones". Journalist's Resource. Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  9. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (October 15, 2015). "Investigating Racial Injustice". Shorenstein Center. Harvard University. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  10. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (Spring 2008). "Part Three: Los Angeles/Watts – In 1965, Watts burned – and the people cheered" (PDF). Kerner Plus 40 Report. University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and Center for Africana Studies & the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina A&T State University. pp. 28–32. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  11. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (2009). "Stories Inside the Black-White Achievement Gap. Part 1: What it is and why it persists: Closing the achievement gap: A matter of national survival". Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  12. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (2009). "Stories Inside the Black-White Achievement Gap. Part 3: Cuba: How all children learn in a mostly-black land: Cuban School Officials Put Premium On Health Of Students". Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  13. ^ a b c "About Us: Nikole Hannah-Jones". ProPublica. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  14. ^ Shaikh, Nermeen; Goodman, Amy; Hannah-Jones, Nikole (April 23, 2014). "Jim Crow in the Classroom: New Report Finds Segregation Lives on in U.S. Schools". Democracy Now. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  15. ^ "New Members". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved April 24, 2021.
  16. ^ Silverstein, Jake (April 1, 2015). "Nikole Hannah-Jones Joins The New York Times Magazine". The New York Times Company. Retrieved June 12, 2016.
  17. ^ Oputu, Edirin (May 2, 2014). "A laurel to ProPublica: A superlative investigative piece examines the resegregation of America's schools". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  18. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (February 27, 2015). "Gentrification doesn't fix inner-city schools". Grist. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  19. ^ Demby, Gene (December 2, 2013). "A Battle For Fair Housing Still Raging, But Mostly Forgotten". NPR. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  20. ^ Howard, Marcus E. (August 8, 2015). "Minnesota's achievement gap debated at NABJ conference". Star Tribune. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  21. ^ Silverstein, Jake (October 13, 2017). "A Chat With MacArthur Genius Nikole Hannah-Jones". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  22. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (November 5, 2015). "'Apostrophes': Nikole Hannah-Jones on Race, Education and Inequality, at Longreads Story Night". Longreads Story Night. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  23. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (August 12, 2014). "How the Media Missed the Mark in Coverage of Michael Brown's Killing". Essence. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  24. ^ Brown, Jeffrey; Hannah-Jones, Nikole; Cashin, Sheryll (August 11, 2015). "Why school districts like Michael Brown's have suffered 'rapid resegregation'". PBS. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  25. ^ Moser, Laura (August 4, 2015). "There's Another Racist Tragedy in St. Louis That Nobody Talks About". Slate. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  26. ^ "Previous Classes". New America. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  27. ^ "Nikole Hannah-Jones". New America. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  28. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (June 2, 2020). The Problem We All Live with. One World. ISBN 9780399180569.
  29. ^ a b Gibson, Caitlin (October 11, 2017). "MacArthur 'genius' grant winners step into the spotlight: 'Is this really happening?'". Retrieved May 5, 2020 – via www.washingtonpost.com.
  30. ^ "Nikole Hannah-Jones - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved October 11, 2020.
  31. ^ Barrus, Jeff (May 4, 2020). "Nikole Hannah-Jones Wins Pulitzer Prize for 1619 Project". Pulitzer Center. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  32. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (August 14, 2019). "The Idea of America". Retrieved July 17, 2020 – via NYTimes.com.
  33. ^ The 1619 Project (August 14, 2019). "The 1619 Project". Retrieved July 17, 2020 – via NYTimes.com.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  34. ^ a b Tracy, Marc (May 4, 2020). "The New York Times and the Anchorage Daily News Win Pulitzer Prizes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  35. ^ "Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  36. ^ "We Respond to the Historians Who Critiqued The 1619 Project". The New York Times. December 20, 2019. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  37. ^ "Historian Gordon Wood responds to the New York Times' defense of the 1619 Project". www.wsws.org. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  38. ^ "Opinion | I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me". POLITICO. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  39. ^ Silverstein, Jake (March 11, 2020). "An Update to The 1619 Project". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  40. ^ "The 1619 Project Tells a False Story About Capitalism, Too". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
  41. ^ "Now the 1619 Project is trying to rewrite its own history". The New York Post. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
  42. ^ "N.Y. Times owes explanation for 1619 Project reversal". The Boston Herald. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
  43. ^ Stephens, Bret (October 9, 2020). "Opinion | The 1619 Chronicles". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 11, 2020.
  44. ^ Sullivan, Margaret. "Perspective | Here's a list of the 10 greatest works of journalism of the past 10 years. Care to argue about it?". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
  45. ^ "Pulitzer Prize-winning MacArthur 'Genius' Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times to become Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism". UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  46. ^ "PW special report: After conservative criticism, UNC backs down from offering acclaimed journalist tenured position". NC Policy Watch. May 19, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  47. ^ "UNC's 1619 Project Hire: A Case Study of Failed University Governance". The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. May 10, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  48. ^ "UNC withholds tenure for "1619 Project" journalist after conservative backlash". NBC News. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  49. ^ "Protests after North Carolina university denies tenure to 1619 Project journalist". the Guardian. May 20, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  50. ^ "Nikole Hannah-Jones Denied Tenure at University of North Carolina". New York Times. May 19, 2021. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  51. ^ Robertson, Katue (June 23, 2021). "Nikole Hannah-Jones Says She Won't Join U.N.C. Faculty Without Tenure". The New York Times.
  52. ^ Mettler, Katie (December 22, 2019). "Five professors say the 1619 Project should be amended. 'We disagree,' says the New York Times". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  53. ^ a b c Ismail, Aymann (February 13, 2021). "Nikole Hannah-Jones on Donald McNeil's Resignation, Why She Was Involved, and an Exhausting Week at the New York Times". Slate Magazine. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  54. ^ a b c d "Our Creation Story – IDA B. Wells Society". idabwellssociety.org. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  55. ^ Hannah-Jones, Nikole (March 2015). "A Letter From Black America: Yes, we fear the police. Here's why". Politico. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  56. ^ "This American Life Wins December Sidney for Shining a Light on Racial Profiling in the Housing Market". The Sidney Hillman Foundation. December 2013. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  57. ^ "Tobenkin Award: Past Winners – 2013". Columbia University. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  58. ^ Turner, Aprill (April 23, 2015). "Nikole Hannah-Jones Named NABJ 2015 Journalist of the Year". National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  59. ^ Prince, Richard (August 10, 2015). "NABJ "Journalist of Year" Says to Tell Blacks' Stories". Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  60. ^ Walsh, Mark (April 21, 2015). "ProPublica Report on Resegregation Takes Top Education Writers' Award". Education Week. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  61. ^ "61. Nikole Hannah-Jones". The Root. 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  62. ^ Barron, James (February 14, 2016). "New York Times Journalists Among Winners of 2015 Polk Awards". The New York Times. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  63. ^ "2017 National Magazine Awards | ASME". asme.magazine.org. Archived from the original on March 6, 2019. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
  64. ^ "Nikole Hannah-Jones '03 (M.A.) receives UNC's prestigious Distinguished Alumna Award". UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
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