Register

Nikole Hannah-Jones discusses The 1619 Project

Author Talk in Partnership with MahoganyBooks

Come to the MLK Library to welcome back Putlizer Prize winner & New York Times Bestselling author Nikole Hannah-Jones as we celebrate the paperback release of The 1619 Project.

This phenomal work of art has taken the world by storm, earning many accolades including an emmy for the docuseries adaptation! We are looking forward to you joining us for this powerful conversation, moderated by Well Read Black Girl Glory Edim.

A big thank you to our partners and co-hosts at the DC Public Library and the DC Public Library Foundation for your generous supporter of this event. 

For reasonable accommodations, please contact the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@dc.gov. For ASL or tactile interpretation, please allow at least seven (7) days notice.

About the Book

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

About the Author

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. The book version of The 1619 Project as well as the 1619 Project children's book, Born on the Water, were instant #1 New York Times bestsellers. Her1619 Project is now a six-part docuseries on Hulu and won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.

Hannah-Jones has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times.

She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy. Hannah-Jones is also the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of investigative reporters and editors of color, and in 2022 she opened the 1619 Freedom School, a free, afterschool literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. Hannah-Jones holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her Bachelor of Arts in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.

About the Moderator

Glory Edim is an author, activist, and the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a nationwide book club-turned-literacy non-profit that celebrates the life changing power of literature. Well-Read Black Girl’s mission is to use literature as a tool for advocacy and collective empowerment. Her best-selling anthology, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, was published by Penguin Random House in 2018. Her memoir, Gather Me, explores the intimate relationship between reading and self-healing. It's currently available for preorder and debuts October 2024. She resides in Washington D.C.

Upcoming events