Featured photo: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project
Photos by Anthony Davis
Written by Tanya Terry
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, but is no stranger to Flint. The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project said her college roommate was from Flint. So, when Hannah-Jones recently visited the Capitol Theatre as part of the Ballenger Eminent Persons Lecture Series of Mott Community College (MCC), she came to tell the people of Flint what they needed to hear versus what they may have wanted to hear.
“If ever a city needed to talk about the 1619 Project, it’s Flint,” she said.
Hannah-Jones earned the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York, among many other honors.
She also said she came to Flint quite often during her college years.
“Just to set the table, my talk today will not be inspirational at all,” Hannah-Jones said at the beginning of her recent presentation.
“You will likely feel a bit uncomfortable, as we should, because these are uncomfortable times…” she continued.
She told audience members she felt an obligation to sound the alarm for the state of our democracy, and she hoped they would join her after hearing her talk-to fight for the country all Americans deserve.
The 1619 Project began with a question: ‘What would it mean to mark our origin story, not in 1776…but at 1619?’
This year marked the beginning of African slaves in Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the American colonies, according to Hannah-Jones, who was inducted into the Society of American Historians in 2020.
Hannah-Jones said the most contested project of the 1619 Project is the argument there might not be an America if southern colonists had not wanted to preserve the main source of their wealth.
During the presentation, Hannah-Jones talked about how some very powerful senators introduced legislation to strip federal funding from any school district found to be teaching the 1619 Project. She also pointed out the Trump administration said it would send the Department of Education to investigate schools teaching this project. Then, the Trump Administration introduced the 1776 Commission.
According to https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/, the report produced by the commission was “a powerful description of the effect the principles of the Declaration of Independence have had on this Nation’s history, and a dispositive rebuttal of reckless ‘re-education’ attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one.”
President Joe Biden issued an executive order to dissolve the 1776 Commission when he got into office.
In addition to this, Hannah-Jones talked about a major shift in attitude about race related matters and talking about them that occurred shortly after George Floyd’s death.
She also asked the audience if they’d heard George Washington’s teeth were made of wood.
“His teeth were made of human teeth that had been pulled from the mouths of people he enslaved,” expressed Hannah-Jones.
Hannah-Jones said whether we acknowledge our ugly past or not it’s shaping us.
“Look at Flint. What happened in Flint wasn’t just about one administration. This was set up in a society that put things in place.”
Hannah-Jones said we can ignore the past that shaped Flint, but it’s shaping Flint regardless. She also said it doesn’t matter if people are racist as individuals or if they love or hate Black people.
“So what’s the better thing-to ignore it or to confront it so you can counteract it?”
Hannah-Jones’ appearance was co-sponsored by Mott Community College, the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, the Flint & Genesee Group, the Flint Institute of Music, the Ruth Mott Foundation and the University of Michigan-Flint.
