Nikole Hannah-Jones: Trump Is Erasing Black History

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Donald Trump’s second term has swung a wrecking ball at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs throughout the country. Few writers seem better suited to explain this unique moment in America than Nikole Hannah-Jones.

A New York Times journalist and Howard University professor, Hannah-Jones has spent years studying and shaping compelling—and at times controversial—narratives about American history. In 2019, she created The 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories and essays that placed the first slave ship that arrived in Virginia at the center of the US’ origin story. Today, the Trump administration is pushing against that kind of historical reframing while dismantling federal policies designed to address structural racism. Hannah-Jones says she’s been stunned by the speed of Trump’s first few months.

“We haven’t seen the federal government weaponized against civil rights in this way” since the turn of the century, Hannah-Jones says. “We’ve not lived in this America before. And we are experiencing something that, if you study history, it’s not unpredictable, yet it’s still shocking that we’re here.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks to Hannah-Jones about the rollback of DEI and civil rights programs across the country, the ongoing battle to reframe American history, and whether this will lead to another moment of rebirth for Black Americans.

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Read: Trump Shuts Down Diversity Programs Across Government (Mother Jones)
Listen: 40 Acres and a Lie (Reveal)
Read: The 1619 Project (The New York Times Magazine)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We see Donald Trump running on this idea of economics, but enacting policies that are designed to stoke racial animus and polarization, and that he's enacting policies to make it impossible for us to grapple with the complexities of this society.
0:21.0	Hey, y'all. I have really been looking forward to this.
0:24.2	Today, on more to the story, we have the incomparable, Nicole Hannah-Jones.
0:30.1	She's a historian, a journalist, and more importantly, at least to me, she's my buddy.
0:35.2	Today, we're talking about Trump's second term,
0:37.7	the extreme backlash against civil rights,
0:40.5	life after the 1619 project,
0:43.0	and the mythology of American history.
0:45.6	Stick around. It's going to be a good one.
1:02.4	It is a notorious Nicole Hannah-Jones.
1:05.3	I haven't seen you in a bone age.
1:06.4	I know.
1:08.9	I actually can't remember the last time I saw you.
1:11.9	It's been forever in a day.
1:12.5	How you doing?
1:14.7	You know, trying to survive America, man.
1:23.6	This is more to the story.
1:24.8	I'm out Ledson.
1:29.1	When I think about contemporary writers of the Black experience in America,
1:35.2	a few names immediately come to mind. People like Tanahasi Coates, Amani Perry, and today's guest,
1:42.3	Nicole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project. Nicole upended how we think about American history by placing the arrival of the first slave ship
1:45.8	in Virginia at the center of our country's origin story.
	...

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