American · b. 1976
Nikole Hannah-Jones is an American investigative journalist and professor. She covered civil rights and racial segregation in education for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, where she became a staff writer in 2015. Her reporting on school resegregation earned a George Polk Award and a National Magazine Award. In 2019 she created The 1619 Project, which examines the legacy of slavery in American life, and won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her opening essay. She expanded the project into the 2021 book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story and later a Hulu docuseries. She is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting. She holds the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy. Her work has shaped national debate about how American history is taught, and has drawn both major awards and sustained criticism.