Why 'The 1619 Project' creator is 'proud' to have 'enemies' in Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis

When “The 1619 Project” was released 3½ years ago, the ambitious reexamination of American history sparked difficult conversations about the legacy of slavery in the United States and earned praise for its creator, New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones.

It also provoked a fierce, if predictable, backlash from critics, many of whom were threatened by its central thesis: that the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia 400 years ago was a defining moment — perhaps the defining moment — in the history of the United States, one that continues to have a real and frequently devastating effect on Black Americans today.

“The 1619 Project,” which was first published as a collection of essays in the New York Times Magazine, then adapted into a podcast and a book, also attracted attention from Hollywood producers interested in making it into a documentary.

Though she hadn't originally imagined this possibility, Hannah-Jones has always been an enthusiastic consumer of historical documentaries and understood the power of bringing the multimedia project to a wider audience. In particular, “Eyes on the Prize,” the landmark 14-part series about the civil rights movement, “was transformative for me,” she says in a video chat from her Brooklyn apartment. “I can't tell you how many times I watched that documentary.”

“The 1619 Project” has now arrived on Hulu as a docuseries, and while Hannah-Jones is reluctant to say the series emulates "Eyes on the Prize" — "There are certain things you don't emulate" — it offers a similarly compelling look at the deep roots of racial injustice in America.

Each of the six episodes, like the essays on which they are based, considers a current phenomenon — voter disenfranchisement, Black maternal health, the racial wealth gap — and traces it back to the history of slavery and segregation in the United States, drawing powerful and often unexpected connections between past and present.

The series also weaves in details about Hannah-Jones’ family that vividly illustrate the project’s themes — her white grandparents’ decision to disown their daughter for marrying a Black man; her Black grandmother’s journey during the Great Migration from the Mississippi Delta to a red-lined neighborhood in Waterloo, Iowa; her late father’s fierce patriotism and military service.

The series, produced by the Onyx Collective, a Disney-owned content brand highlighting the work of creators of color, is almost certain to provoke further consternation from voices on the right. But Hannah-Jones has no plans to back down, and is already eagerly thinking of ideas for a potential second season. “One thing about studying this history,” she says. “I'm just not ever going to be intimidated.”

How did you approach telling this story for TV and making it visually exciting and engaging but also informative? 

That was a major challenge: How do you keep the story moving? How do you visually keep interest when there is a lot of dense history? When you're reading the essays, you might read for a while, set them down and then come back. We had lots of conversations about how to breathe life into each episode. We really tried to personalize these sometimes abstract concepts through the lives and narratives of real people. And we also just tried to shoot it in a very visually appealing way. My model was Melina Matsoukas’ commercial for Beats by Dre [“You Love Me.”] I watched that commercial so many times. I was like, I don't even know what the hell you're selling, but this is amazing.

What was it like for you as a print journalist to step in front of the camera? Did you have to change your reporting process?

I'm used to it just being me, my iPhone, a pad and a pen. To invite people in to see my interview style, the way I ask questions — I felt very exposed. It’s really challenging to create intimacy with people when you're asking them to share very traumatic experiences but there's this whole crew around you. And right when you’re having that person-to-person moment, they're like, “Cut, we have to change the battery.” I think the benefit of me not being a broadcaster is I really am just talking to people the way I talk to people when I report. But sitting there, watching myself on camera for hours and hours, was a new level of hell [laughs]. Why is my hair looking like that? Why did I ask the question that way? But at some point, I had to let that go.

Were there any moments in the process of making this that were particularly powerful for you? I am thinking of when you teared up while looking at the slave ledger.

That was a surprisingly emotional moment for me. I've studied this history for more than half of my life. I knew that these ledgers existed, but there was something about the combination of working on this project and being so immersed in this history every day for four years now and then holding the ledger in your hand, running your finger along the names and seeing human beings who could very well have been my direct ancestors listed beside farm implements and animals, and in some cases they're more valuable than the human beings. Just thinking about my family, I was really overcome with emotion.

Also, interviewing Mr. MacArthur Cotton [a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who was arrested for organizing a mass voter registration effort in 1963], in Greenwood, [Miss.], my dad's hometown. We're sitting right across from a Confederate monument. And right behind us is the courthouse where he was arrested for simply trying to exercise his rights to citizenship. He tells me the story of how he was tortured at Parchman prison, strung up by his wrists, left there to hang until he defecates all over himself. Just sitting there with him realizing how close this history is, and everything that he sacrificed for us, was deeply emotional.

And this didn't make it in the documentary, but as we were filming, this guy comes up, wearing a Confederate hat. He sits on the monument and starts filming us. I'm like, "I don't know what's happening here." So I started filming him back. Then he left. You realize there's still danger out there.