When Nikole Hannah-Jones ’03 (MA) was in high school, she became obsessed with one year: 1619 — the year African slaves were first transported to an English-speaking colony in the Americas.

As the 400th anniversary of that voyage was approaching, Hannah-Jones found herself at the New York Times Magazine, where she works as an investigative reporter. She pitched a project to re-examine the legacy of slavery in this country tied to that event.

“I feel like my whole career and, in some ways, my whole life was geared toward this moment,” said Hannah-Jones, who received her graduate degree from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Her 1619 Project debuted in August with essays, poems, short fiction, a photo essay and an audio series, and they all work together to build a case that slavery is one of the foundational elements of the country’s development.

“We can’t understand why things are like they are in the country until we grapple with the fact that slavery is at our foundations,” she said.

Significant amounts of research, investigation and fact-checking went into this project, and Hannah-Jones learned those skills at Carolina.

“I think you see what I learned here in my work every day,” said Hannah-Jones, who was a Roy H. Park Fellow at the journalism school.

And she’ll be returning to Carolina on Nov. 16 to officially kick off a collaborative relationship between Carolina and the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a national organization she co-founded to train investigative journalists of color.

On this week’s episode, Hannah-Jones will explain how Carolina helped prepare her for that pivotal moment to lead the 1619 Project and why she’s returning to Carolina to train more journalists.

Well Said: Learning and teaching investigative reporting

From March Madness to Cuban relations, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill community is playing a role in some of the most important topics and issues making headlines around the world.

Join us every Wednesday for the UNC-Chapel Hill's “Well Said” podcast as we talk with Carolina’s newsmakers and experts. Each week, students, faculty, staff and alumni will discuss whats going on in classrooms, labs and around campus, and how it pertains to the local, national and international headlines.