Creator’s family illustrates ‘1619 Project’ themes
Hannah-Jones says being honest about grandparents hard
When “The 1619 Project” was released in 2019, 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 backlash from critics threatened by its central thesis: that the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia 400 years ago was a 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. “I can’t tell you how many times I watched that documentary.”
“The 1619 Project” arrived on Hulu as a docuseries, and all episodes are now streaming. While Hannah-Jones is reluctant to say the series emulates “Eyes on the Prize,” 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 HannahJones’ 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 redlined neighborhood in Waterloo, Iowa; her late father’s fierce patriotism and military service.
The series is almost certain to provoke further consternation from some
voices. 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.”
This interview with Hannah-Jones has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: How did you approach telling this story for TV and making it visually exciting and engaging but also informative? A:
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.
Q: You have a great episode about Black music right in the middle of the series. Did you feel like you needed a subject that was more joyful and celebratory to provide a bit of a breather? A:
The whole thing can’t just be pain and struggle. As Black people were fighting back against everything that we were going through, we were also living, loving and creating. What better vehicle to tell that story of the full breadth of human emotion than music? Even in the original project, the music essay (by Wesley Morris) was intended to give us a space to recognize Black joy, resilience and creativity. And it was essential in the documentary series.
I don’t think the series is bingeable. Every episode is hard. You have to take time between them.
Q: You mention in the first episode, “Democracy,” how your father flew the flag every day, and it confused you when you were young. Has this project helped you understand his version of patriotism? A:
Absolutely. The democracy essay for “The 1619 Project” (on which the episode is based) is the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think you can watch the democracy episode and not see it as patriotic. It’s not patriotic as defined by conservatives who think patriotism is performative — standing up for a flag or wearing a flag pin — but the highest calling of patriotism, which is to fight your country and force it to live up to its ideals. Black Americans have epitomized that.
Literally by working on this project, I came to understand that my father wasn’t flying that flag as a sign of his subjugation, which is what it felt like, but as a sign of his refusal to have his lineage and legacy be taken from him. As
Black Americans, we literally have no other country to claim. We have been made to feel that we can’t really claim the country we played such a role in building, and my father refused to feel that. … That essay — particularly the part about my dad flying the flag — is the thing that people across racial lines connect with the most.
Q: Did including your family history in the series make you feel vulnerable? A:
It was (director and executive producer) Roger Ross Williams’ idea. It’s different to tell your own story in print than visually. That was when I felt most vulnerable. Understanding the type of vitriol that you face, the ugly things that people say online — unless you’ve been in the storm of “The 1619 Project,” I don’t think you can really understand what that’s like. I’ve chosen this profession, so I have to deal with it, but to invite my family (into that), I was really worried. But they were so proud to be able to share their story and represent Black Americans and the common struggle.
The other hard part was being honest about my grandparents. My grandparents were very good to me and my sisters, but also they were racist. Even though they loved us, they would make comments about other Black people. They disowned my mom when she married my father. I had to spend a lot of time thinking about if I wanted to put that in the documentary. Ultimately, I felt like we ask people to do this for us all the time as journalists, so I had to be honest.