Nikole Hannah-Jones Knows Why History Feels Dangerous

Cannonball with Wesley Morris

The New York Times

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

Six years ago, with the publication of The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones argued that slavery was a foundational institution upon which the United States was built. President Trump called the project a crusade against American history — ideological poison that, “if not removed,” would “dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.” Now, his administration is making a similar argument to attack diversity programs, historical discussions of slavery, civil rights and more as he pressures museums, schools, government agencies, national parks and other civic institutions to de-emphasize race. Wesley contributed to The 1619 Project, and he sits down with Nikole to trace the project’s journey from publication to this moment — when Trump has returned to power on a message that explicitly rejected its premise.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Wesley of Cannonball.
0:08.9	I'm talking to Nicole Hannah-Jones this week.
0:11.5	Say hi, Nicole.
0:12.3	Hey, Wesley. When something big happens in this country, something that feels important in terms of who we are, I always, I don't know, I need some time to sit with it.
0:36.6	And to think about how it fits into the larger story
0:40.2	of this country, but also it's history.
0:44.0	And right now, what's happening is a battle over the story itself,
0:50.7	our story.
0:52.0	Since January, there's been this effort underway to dismantle the thorny, complicated version
0:57.8	of that story, to sanitize it, basically.
1:01.3	Our government prefers a brighter, cleaner, more glorious story.
1:05.1	And so, I've needed some time to understand what that's all about, is this wide-scale dismantling of the
1:12.4	messier, more uncomfortable version has been playing out. And, you know, basically a lot of it
1:20.9	around our cultural institutions. And what I keep thinking about is this one afternoon six years ago. It was a gray day in February.
1:32.3	I definitely remember that. And we were on the third floor of the New York Times building.
1:38.2	And an all-star group of journalists, scholars, New York Times Magazine staff folks, had come together to
1:45.3	brainstorm about an idea that our colleague Nicole Hannah-Jones had to commemorate the 400th
1:52.5	anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on what is now North American soil.
2:01.2	I can't remember if the 1619 project was an official name,
2:05.5	but there must have been about 40 of us in that room.
2:09.2	And the exercise that day was to identify practices and ideas that exist in the present,
2:16.8	whose roots go back to American enslavement.
	...

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