The New York Times Magazine issue that published the first edition of "The 1619 Project" came out on a Wednesday – August 14, 2019. The night before was unforgettable for its creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, who admitted to Salon, "I was a complete mess. I was anxious. I couldn't sleep because I had no idea."
She's referring to the question of whether she had an inkling as to how people would react to it – not the gargantuan cultural impact its essays, fiction, poetry and photographs would eventually have. "The 1619 Project" earned Hannah-Jones a Pulitzer Prize for her essay on democracy, the work's foundational text. In 2021 she became Howard University's inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism.
