Premiering Jan. 26, Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and producer Oprah Winfrey bring us a potent new Hulu docuseries that shines a light on America’s original sin, Slavery.
“The 1619 Project,” a six-part documentary series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning essay and podcast series developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, is now streaming on Hulu.
The project, a series of essays, poems and multimedia by Hannah-Jones, other New York Times writers and historians first published in The New York Times Magazine in 2019, examined the impact of slavery on American life, economics and culture through the current day.
The cover of “The 1619 Project”
Arguments over the importance, relevance and accuracy of the project began immediately, and it became a lightning rod in the battle of how race should be taught in schools. Political leaders publicly praised or denounced it. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it “a lie.” Former president Donald Trump condemned “The 1619 Project” as “toxic propaganda” and “ideological poison” that “will destroy our country,” and he called for an alternative lesson plan in response. The Biden Administration cited the project in a request for a grant to support “antiracist” education. GOP leaders in multiple states filed bills to cut funding to K-12 schools and colleges that provided lessons derived from the project.
Florida went further in 2021 by specifically banning “prohibited material from The 1619 Project” in any educational curriculum. Later that year when Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his proposal to restrict diversity training and race discussions in Florida businesses and schools in what he called the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” he claimed the new bill built on the 1619 Project ban.
What is ‘The 1619 Project’?
Nikole Hannah-Jones is shown in the newsroom of The New York Times in New York in 2017.
In 2019, The New York Times Magazine published a series called “The 1619 Project.” It included 10 essays, a photo essay, fiction pieces and poems, artwork, images and audio files by Nikole Hannah-Jones and several historians and thought leaders to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first known enslaved Africans in the British colonies that became the United States, a point often considered as the beginning of American slavery. Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for her introductory essay in the project, “America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One.”
