Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, spoke in-depth about her personal experiences and writings centered on racial injustice, an examination of the modern legacy of enslavement and school resegregation during a University-wide event Friday, Oct. 28. The event, co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Maxwell School and other campus units and schools and colleges, took place at the Syracuse University Art Museum.

Hannah-Jones is the author of the 1619 Project, a series of academic essays that was published in The New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Considered by many to be a cultural icon, Hannah-Jones has dedicated her career to covering civil rights and racial injustice.

During the University event, Hannah-Jones highlighted the central argument of her project, which is the significant role enslavement played in the building of our nation, as well as shining light on accurate historical facts around slavery that she says are rarely taught in America’s education system. “You can’t teach what you don’t know yourself,” she said.

Hannah-Jones said that the first step in making people aware of the authentic history of the United States is to better train teachers to teach basic history concepts. “Stop treating histories as segregated histories,” Hannah-Jones said. “You can’t treat the history of Black people as segregated from the history of America.”

Jessica Lynn Elliott, a fourth-year Ph.D. history student in the Maxwell School, was the moderator for the discussion.

Read more about the discussion via the SU News website.