NIKOLE
HANNAH-JONES

At 11 years old, Nikole Hannah-Jones had her first letter to the editor published. It was a report on busing, inspired by her experiences being transported to school across town as part of a desegregation program.

She has continued to write into adulthood and has won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on racial injustice. One notable project took three years and chronicled the ways that official policy created and maintained segregation in housing and schools in New York City and other cities across America.

Nikole is the creator of the landmark 1619 Project, a long-form journalism initiative that reexamines traditionally revered figures and events in American history through the lens of slavery's lasting impact. The project led to an educational curriculum supported by the Pulitzer Center. The 1619 Project book debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was adapted into an Emmy Award-winning six-part documentary series.

Nikole is a strong supporter of Black institutions and is the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting at Morehouse College and the founder of the 1619 Freedom School in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. She is also the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy.

Nikole lectures throughout the U.S. and internationally on the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. In 2022, she gave a speech before the United Nations General Assembly during the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.