Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “The 1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, addressed a sold-out audience in the Bovard Auditorium Tuesday evening at the inaugural event of the Charlotta Bass Media Trailblazer Speaker Series at USC.
“We don’t know our history well at all,” Hannah-Jones said before distinguished guests, faculty and students. “We certainly have amnesia about Black history and the history of race in this country, and so I can’t write about today if I haven’t helped to understand the history that failed today.”
The 1619 Project, named after the year enslaved Africans were first brought to the English colonies, began as a series of essays published in The New York Times Magazine. Since its publication in 2019, Hannah-Jones has published a book expanding on the project’s essays and released a six-episode docuseries on Hulu.
Hannah-Jones began the speech by sharing her experience of being bussed to school in Waterloo, Iowa, as part of a desegregation program. While she didn’t understand the reasoning at the time, she points to that experience as a pivotal moment in her life.
“I really think I started to realize and understand the literal landscape of inequality through that school window, in that two-hour bus ride where I would notice that everything got nicer,” Hannah-Jones said.
As one of few Black students at the school, she said she began to question the narrative being told about her community and her people.
“I think it can be so hard to understand what it’s like, how demeaning and degrading it is to never see yourself in the story,” Hannah-Jones said. “You really believe that teachers are teaching what’s important to know, and so if we’re not in there, we must not have done much to be included.”
It wasn’t until she took a Black studies elective course that her worldview completely changed.
“My mind was just blown, and I became really angry that all of this knowledge existed and no one thought it was important for us to learn,” Hannah-Jones said.
The conversation, moderated by Annenberg professor and Bass Lab founder Allissa V. Richardson, highlighted the stories and motivations behind the ongoing project as it seeks to continue illuminating the legacy of slavery in the United States and placing the contributions of Black Americans at the center of our national rhetoric.
Hannah-Jones spoke on the impact of the project by discussing how newsrooms view controversial ideas to societies’ developed norms.
“Newsrooms — they say that want diversity,” she said. “What they really want is phenotype diversity. They want to be able to tick you off a list, but then they don’t actually want the intellect and the perspective that comes with it.”
Hannah-Jones wanted to create a piece that allowed for the public to challenge our country’s history with her as she began to do on her two hour bus ride to school. By drawing upon the courage of her ancestors, Hannah-Jones wanted to stand up against those trying to make her insecure and afraid to challenge the narrative that history has created about Black history.
“I didn’t get into journalism to make other people comfortable,” Hannah-Jones said.
USC President Carol Folt addressed the university’s stance on the current issue of legislation being passed to limit diversity offices which are used to study the past.
“I’m here to tell you that USC will not follow in those steps,” Folt said. “We’re going to continue to find ways to honor the Black experience and uplift Black voices.”
Alfonso Hedge, a graduate student studying digital social media, felt impassioned by Folt’s response.
“Especially in this day and age, that’s something people need to know,” Hedge said.
Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017, and was tonight’s inaugural co-recipient of the Charlotta Bass Media Trailblazer Award.
Darnella Frazier was also recognized as co-recipient of the award for her activism and courage in the recording of George Floyd’s death.
Hannah-Jones left the audience with a closing remark about the legacy of Black Americans and her hope for the country moving forward.
“When those white men wrote those words of liberty that did not include our people, our people read that and said yes they do,” Hannah-Jones said. “We have been the ones who have expanded the idea of freedom for every marginalized person in America. This country would not exist as it does without us. One day if we can recognize all of our humanity we can be the country of our greatest ideals, but we have to tell the truth first.”