Interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones on new docuseries The 1619 Project on Hulu

I had the fantastic opportunity to speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones on her six-part docuseries The 1619 Project. The series seeks 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. The six episodes are Democracy, Race, Music, Capitalism, Fear, and Justice. Each demonstrates and showcases the significance of Black American contributions to the growth and wealth of the nation since being first brought to the country.    

During our conversation, Nikole gave me insight into the project’s development, why the specific episodes were chosen, and what understanding she hopes people will get after watching the series. 

Cox: Nikole Hannah-Jones, I am super excited to talk to you about the 1619 project. And I would like to ask you the first question when you came up with the different parts of democracy race, music, capitalism, fear, and justice? Why those six components?  

Hannah-Jones: We wanted the episodes to focus on what we think are the pillars of American identity. We picked the ones that we thought would make the most potent arguments. Democracy was evident because we think of ourselves as this exceptionally free nation. Then add to that capitalism as another pillar because we believe it is the most effective economic system in the history of the world.   

These pillars and the other four can’t be genuinely understood individually and collectively if we don’t know how race was constructed to justify enslavement in the nation’s history. So, for example, looking at the pillar of music, we see how foundational Black Americans are to American culture and identity.  

Everything was chosen to subvert how we were taught to think about this country.   

In the last episode, “Justice” argues for reparations so that at the end of the viewer watching all six episodes, they can only come away with one conclusion: an outstanding debt owed to Black Americans.  

Cox: Speaking of exceptional. I read a book called American Exceptionalism. This book talks about the foundation of American identity being tied to the idealism that we are exceptional. Where does this project lie in shining light on that concept?  

Hannah-Jones: I don’t believe in any idea that a country is an exceptional country. Countries can do great things, and countries can do terrible things. And most countries do both. We, as a project, are trying to subvert this idea of American exceptionalism by arguing that we shouldn’t be proud of the many things that make America exceptional. For example, we have an exceptional amount of inequality in this country with so much wealth. We were founded on exceptional hypocrisy and by men who argued for God-given universal liberty. And yet we’re practicing the opposite, holding one-fifth of the population in the original thirteen colonies in bondage.   

Frankly, we are exceptional because of our legacy of slavery, of which we should not be proud.   

Cox: I love the concept of episode three regarding music and how it has shaped culture and identity in America. Our contributions have created a billion-dollar industry. What is something you all found when working on this episode?   

Hannah-Jones: We try to segregate musical genres and categories the ones that we say are Black genres. The primary argument of the episode is that any distinctively American music, regardless of the genre, has roots that we can trace back to being created by Black people. So, if you listen to pop, country, rock, or even folk music, all their foundational base comes from Black American music.  

Cox: I love the development and transitions between the episodes. Episode five, “Fear,” talks about the policing and institutionalization of fear in this country towards Black people. What is this saying regarding the question of police in America and issues such as defunding and the great debate?  

Hannah-Jones: I would argue that Black people do want the police. But they want police who police their communities like they do white communities. Black communities are simultaneously over-policed and under-policed. We are under-policed, and you see the result is more crime victims. So, we actually want less crime in our communities. But when we are over-policed, people within the communities are specifically targeted and surveillance. So, they aren’t serving the people but trying to control them.   

In this episode, we go beyond the conversation on policing and how police function in Black communities. Instead, we highlight how white people who are not police feel they have the right to police Black bodies. This is how you get situations like the Central Park dog walker or Black people being questioned by white people in specific neighborhoods. It brings to light this notion that Black Americans are a population that needs to be controlled.  

This all stems from the legacy of slavery, and we are trying to understand why. Like, are things this way right now. The episode is called Fear because it tries to understand the psychology that developed under slavery against Black people. And we attempt to find out why this psychology still permeates today the way Black people are policed by both police and regular American citizens.   

The last thing I would like to say is that we really want people to question why we have come to accept that law enforcement should somehow be less culpable for crime than regular citizens. What if I am an average person, and the police pull a gun on me or try to tase me? I’m supposed to be calm and rational in that situation. Yes, when it comes to Black people, police who are trained can use the excuse that they were afraid or just got angry. We want to really turn that on its head and say that police should be more accountable and not less to citizens that they are supposed to be serving.   

Cox: I know we are out of time, but I would love to ask you one last question.  
Hannah-Jones: Sure!  

Cox: I would love to discuss the Capitalism and Justice episodes together with you. I think when we look at those two and how they play complementary roles in discussing generational wealth for Black Americans and how we were intentionally deprived of it.   

Hannah-Jones: I love how you asked that question by pairing the Capitalism and Justics episodes together. It’s important to understand that slavery and those hundred years of violently enforced racial apartheid that we call Jim Crow were economic systems. We like to think of them as racist, but these were economic systems.   

Remember, slavery didn’t occur because Europeans didn’t like Africans. It happened because they wanted to exploit the labor of Africans, who, in turn, produced wealth for white institutions and white people. Jim Crow attempted to do the same thing to Black Americans as an exploitable labor class. So, if we understand slavery and Jim Crow as our economic systems, we can understand very quickly why Black Americans deserve financial repair. Under these systems, liberty was taken from Black Americans so that wealth could be taken literally from their bodies.   

These episodes really go hand and hand to show that it should be unsurprising that we have close to zero wealth in this country as a people. The first two hundred and fifty years of our time on this land was done so that all our wealth was given to white Americans. Then for the next hundred years, we were denied access to all of the levers that white Americans used to build wealth.   

And the last thing I want to say, which is essential, is that we aren’t saying white Americans owe reparations. We are arguing that the government owes reparations because of all that was done and sanctioned at the federal, state, and local levels of government.   

So yes, our country owes a debt. If you understand our system of capitalism was built on the theft of Black wealth and labor, then you know the only way to make it right is to return that wealth.