Roots of Resilience: Exploring African American History and Literature with Nikole Hannah-Jones

[00:00:00] Welcome to the MahoganyBooks Podcast Network, your gateway to the world of African American Literature.

[00:00:06] We're proud to present a collection of podcasts dedicated to exploring the depth and richness of African American literature.

[00:00:13] I'm also sure South and Podcasts like BlackBooks Matter of the Podcasts, where we learn about the books and major life moments that influence today's top writers.

[00:00:21] Or tune in to Real Ball and Three, where brothers, Jan and Miles, invite amazing people to talk about the meaningful books in their lives.

[00:00:29] So, whether you're a literature enthusiast and advocate for social justice, or simply curious about the untold stories of shape our world,

[00:00:37] subscribe to the MahoganyBooks Podcast Network on your favorite platform and let African American literature ignite your passion.

[00:00:49] How are y'all feeling today? How's it going? How's it going? How are y'all feeling?

[00:00:55] Yeah, yes, yes welcome. Welcome, welcome to the DC Public Library. I am Ramunda Young and my amazing husband of 22 years Derek Young is back here in the past.

[00:01:04] Yes.

[00:01:06] Thank you. Thank you. We just actually celebrate it on 22nd wedding anniversary. Oh, we could go last Sunday. So thank you.

[00:01:14] Thank you.

[00:01:16] Just a little bit about MahoganyBooks. We've been in business for 17 years.

[00:01:21] And our whole premise is how do we make black books accessible no matter where you live?

[00:01:26] When I we first started the bookstore many years ago, I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma and believe it or not,

[00:01:31] I grew up about a mile and a half from Black Wall Street. And I never knew it was there.

[00:01:35] It was never taught in my school. So imagine to my surprise when I got to college,

[00:01:40] I went to Lake University at HBCU there that I found out that the Black Wall Street was a mile and a half from my home.

[00:01:47] So when we talk about Black books, this is something very deep to us. This is something very sacred to us.

[00:01:51] My husband and I to create these moments to create these spaces. So nobody else will not know what we now know.

[00:01:59] Does that make sense? Let me hear some snaps. I get excited.

[00:02:02] Yeah, there should not be a person who doesn't know their history or access to those books that have our history in it.

[00:02:09] So that's a little bit about MahoganyBooks. And why we're here, I really want to shout out to the DC Public Library.

[00:02:16] As our venue host, let's give it up for them again.

[00:02:18] Thank you.

[00:02:21] And also the DC Public Library Foundation, which I'm a proud board member of, but some of the books that are here, they donated those books.

[00:02:29] So we're just grateful for their generosity and their belief in what we do here as a bookstore and what we believe in as our community.

[00:02:36] So let me get into it because I did not come here to hear a reminder. So, but thank you as well.

[00:02:42] So the other year I want to give a big, I'm excited about is our moderator and I want to read about Miss Glority.

[00:02:49] Glority is an author activist and the founder of well-read Black Girl whose mission is to use literature as a tool for advocacy. Yes.

[00:02:57] Advocacy and collective empowerment. Glor has won numerous awards for her work supporting us as a standing literature, including the 2017 Innovators Award from the Lost End of the Times book prize.

[00:03:09] And the Madam CJ Walker Award from the Herston Wright Foundation, give it up for our girl.

[00:03:14] Glority!

[00:03:15] Glority!

[00:03:16] Yes!

[00:03:17] Yes, yes, yes.

[00:03:19] Absolutely and really quickly as you guys post pictures please tag Mahagini.

[00:03:24] Books, please use hashtag the 1690 Project.

[00:03:27] Also, tag well-read Black Girl Nicole Hannah Jones, all those says you take pictures we love to see them.

[00:03:33] So now for our featured author, she makes something deep to me.

[00:03:39] Ooh and I got three eyelashes so we're gonna not try to cry the mother.

[00:03:43] But our featured author is no other than Nicole Hannah Jones.

[00:03:49] She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creative of the 1619 Project and is that right at the New York Times magazine?

[00:03:55] The book version of the 1619 Project as well as the 1619 Project Children's Book, born on the water, were instant number one New York Times Best Seller.

[00:04:05] I need to give it up for that.

[00:04:06] This is hard to describe both from that word.

[00:04:09] Yes.

[00:04:11] Also, the six-part documentary series won an Emmy for Outstanding that Community for Non-Fiction Series.

[00:04:19] Yes, yes, yes.

[00:04:22] She's one numerous awards and also the MacArthur Fellowship, which is known as the Genius Grant.

[00:04:28] Yes, yes.

[00:04:31] And currently she also serves as a Knight of Chair, Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University.

[00:04:37] I know it, that's my pause.

[00:04:39] I'm looking at John.

[00:04:42] The Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University where she founded the Center for Journalism and to Democracy.

[00:04:48] Please give it up for Nicole and Boris.

[00:04:57] No.

[00:04:58] I close to me, gave me a San Obesity Yardre set down.

[00:05:19] Is it on?

[00:05:20] On.

[00:05:22] I think it's on.

[00:05:23] Oh, there.

[00:05:24] Hello?

[00:05:25] Hello?

[00:05:29] Okay, here we go.

[00:05:31] Oh, that was loud.

[00:05:33] That was loud.

[00:05:34] I thought we were going to have a little intro music.

[00:05:36] I was going to walk out music.

[00:05:40] Oh.

[00:05:45] Okay, hey, are you my friend?

[00:05:48] Are you locked in?

[00:05:50] There you go.

[00:05:51] That's the way.

[00:05:53] All right, I just had to set the mood.

[00:05:55] Right?

[00:05:56] Okay.

[00:05:57] That is true.

[00:05:57] They are not like us.

[00:05:58] Not like us.

[00:06:00] That's true.

[00:06:00] Happy June seeing?

[00:06:02] Yes.

[00:06:03] It's still known as still good.

[00:06:04] It is.

[00:06:06] I feel so excited to be on stage with you for many reasons

[00:06:10] to celebrate the paperback launch.

[00:06:12] But just to celebrate you.

[00:06:14] And I have so many questions, but before we get into it,

[00:06:17] can you read for us a little bit?

[00:06:19] Yes.

[00:06:20] Can you just, you know, give us the beauty of your voice

[00:06:23] and set the mood after countries?

[00:06:26] Sure.

[00:06:26] So first of all, hello.

[00:06:28] Oh, all the way back there.

[00:06:30] I'm going to focus on this side because they gave me a standard

[00:06:33] innovation.

[00:06:36] So I'm not going to look over here.

[00:06:40] Except my chair is facing this way, so that's a little challenge

[00:06:43] and just kidding.

[00:06:43] No, thank you, you know, honestly, every time I see a room

[00:06:48] of people who actually want to come out and take away from

[00:06:51] whatever other things that you have to do in your life

[00:06:53] and to talk about what are often really difficult

[00:06:57] emotional subjects.

[00:06:59] I'm just really appreciative of DC, or appreciative of

[00:07:04] our modern and Derek, where are you all?

[00:07:08] You know, they just been out here doing the work and ensuring

[00:07:12] that our communities have access to the books that speak to us.

[00:07:16] And as she knows, I always try to do my book events with black

[00:07:20] booksellers.

[00:07:21] I think it's so important to support the work that they're doing.

[00:07:26] And I also want to shout out, of course,

[00:07:29] that the DC public libraries.

[00:07:32] I talk about this library saved my life as a child.

[00:07:36] I was a nerdy-ass black girl in Waterloo, Iowa.

[00:07:39] The library was like six blocks away from my house and I used to walk

[00:07:43] to the library often.

[00:07:45] It exposed me to entire worlds that I didn't know existed.

[00:07:50] I taught me when I found the book, the joyous sex and I would hide

[00:07:54] in the corner.

[00:07:58] You got to learn by everything in the library.

[00:08:02] I checked out Madonna, Leica, prayer.

[00:08:05] Those are the first album I ever rented from a public library.

[00:08:08] It was a lot going on, y'all.

[00:08:10] But libraries are just so important.

[00:08:13] They are the most besides our public schools.

[00:08:16] And even more so than our public schools,

[00:08:18] the most democratic institutions we have left.

[00:08:21] And it's just so important to support them.

[00:08:23] And I love having events in public libraries because there is no barrier

[00:08:27] to access.

[00:08:28] Everyone knows you can come into a public library,

[00:08:30] so I'm so appreciative of this library system.

[00:08:33] I'm also on the board of the Brooklyn Public Library system.

[00:08:36] We're fighting our mayor trying to cut $53 million from our libraries right now.

[00:08:41] And I think when we think of all the investments that we make in policing

[00:08:45] and things that don't prevent crime to cut from the things

[00:08:49] that actually serve our community is immoral.

[00:08:51] So I'm just grateful to be here.

[00:08:53] I wasn't planning on talking about that, but.

[00:08:57] So yes, I'm going to, you know,

[00:09:01] as we were talking backstage, glory, the 1619 project

[00:09:05] published five years ago in August,

[00:09:07] which is crazy for me to think about.

[00:09:15] Because as a journalist,

[00:09:17] I hate when my back is the people.

[00:09:19] I don't have to turn this chair, sorry.

[00:09:21] Especially to the side of the gaming and stand novation.

[00:09:24] But, you know, when you're a journalist,

[00:09:28] you hope that you will write something that people will care about for two days or three days

[00:09:33] because you all know how it is.

[00:09:35] You have 50 tabs open on your computer

[00:09:38] and then you start reading something on your phone

[00:09:40] and you think you're going to come back to it but you never do.

[00:09:43] So to create, you know,

[00:09:45] a project that is tens of thousands of words on,

[00:09:49] a pass we will not want it to grapple with

[00:09:53] and to know that five years later,

[00:09:55] people still want to come out and talk about it in read

[00:09:58] and learn and honestly grapple with that history.

[00:10:01] It's just amazing.

[00:10:02] I'm sorry, this is from a league bookstore.

[00:10:04] I just did an event with my league bookstore in LA,

[00:10:06] if anybody's out there and support that black bookstore.

[00:10:09] So I'm going to read from the opening chapter

[00:10:12] of the book, which is called Democracy.

[00:10:15] It really is the defining chapter of the book.

[00:10:18] It sets the stage for what the book is trying to argue.

[00:10:22] If you open to that page, you'll see the photo,

[00:10:25] the first photo is of my dad, Milton Hannah.

[00:10:28] There's only two photos in this book

[00:10:30] that are photos of people who are actually featured in the book.

[00:10:33] And one is my dad and one is Mr. Bowling,

[00:10:37] a black man who was lynched for being successful in Alabama

[00:10:40] in the inheritance chapter.

[00:10:42] And I chose this photo one because this is my dad

[00:10:45] when he was serving in the military,

[00:10:47] but also my dad's time,

[00:10:49] stationed in Germany as a black man,

[00:10:51] was a time when he said he felt most like a man

[00:10:54] and most like an American.

[00:10:55] Because as a black man in America,

[00:10:57] he had to live abroad to feel like he could be treated

[00:11:00] as an American.

[00:11:01] So I picked that photo to remind us of the sacrifice

[00:11:06] that black people have made in a country

[00:11:08] that is never wanted to treat us as full citizens.

[00:11:12] My dad always flew in American flag in our front yard.

[00:11:16] The blue paint on our two story house

[00:11:18] was sometimes chipped,

[00:11:20] the fence or the rail by the stairs

[00:11:22] or the front door,

[00:11:23] might occasionally fall into this repair,

[00:11:26] but that flag always flew pristine.

[00:11:29] Our corner lot,

[00:11:31] which had been redlined by the federal government,

[00:11:34] was along the river that divided the black side

[00:11:36] from the white side of our Iowa town.

[00:11:39] At the edge of our lawn,

[00:11:41] high on an aluminum pole,

[00:11:43] sore at the flag,

[00:11:44] which my dad would replace with a new one

[00:11:47] as soon as it showed the slightest tatter.

[00:11:50] My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers

[00:11:53] on a white plantation in Greenwood, Mississippi

[00:11:56] where black people bent over cotton

[00:11:58] from can't see in the morning to can't see at night.

[00:12:01] Just as there enslaved ancestors had done

[00:12:04] on before,

[00:12:06] the Mississippi of my dad's youth

[00:12:08] was in a apartheid state

[00:12:10] that subjugated its black residents

[00:12:12] almost half of the population

[00:12:14] through breathtaking acts of violence.

[00:12:16] White residents in Mississippi

[00:12:19] lynched more black people than those

[00:12:21] of any other state in the country.

[00:12:23] And the white people in my dad's home

[00:12:25] county lynched more black residents

[00:12:27] than those in any other county in Mississippi.

[00:12:30] For crimes,

[00:12:32] the white people in the country

[00:12:34] are not as entering a room occupied by white women,

[00:12:36] bumping into a white girl

[00:12:38] or trying to start a sharecropper's union.

[00:12:42] My dad's mother,

[00:12:44] like all black people in Greenwood

[00:12:46] could not vote,

[00:12:47] could not use the public library

[00:12:49] or find work other than toiling in the cotton field

[00:12:52] or toiling in white people's houses.

[00:12:55] In the 1940s,

[00:12:56] she packed up a few belongings

[00:12:58] and her three small children

[00:12:59] and joined the flood of black southerners fleeing to the north.

[00:13:02] She got off on the Illinois Central Railroad

[00:13:05] in Waterloo, Iowa.

[00:13:07] This is where I had to digress.

[00:13:09] Any y'all been a waterloo?

[00:13:11] Oh, oh, okay.

[00:13:13] Why?

[00:13:14] Okay, so you know.

[00:13:19] So I digress there only

[00:13:21] because it's not common for black folks

[00:13:24] to be from Iowa.

[00:13:25] But if you have read

[00:13:27] my favorite book of all time

[00:13:28] which is Isabelle Wilkerson's

[00:13:30] of warmth of other sons

[00:13:31] and if you read that book,

[00:13:33] my favorite book.

[00:13:34] Then you know that the migration

[00:13:36] followed the train lines.

[00:13:38] So wherever the train lines

[00:13:40] left from in the south,

[00:13:42] we followed them,

[00:13:43] we got off somewhere along that train line.

[00:13:45] So the train line from Greenwood

[00:13:47] was Illinois Central.

[00:13:49] Went up to Chicago

[00:13:51] but for some unknown reason.

[00:13:53] My grandma did not get off in Chicago.

[00:13:57] She was like, I'm going to stay on this train

[00:13:59] a little while longer

[00:14:00] and we end up in Waterloo, Iowa.

[00:14:02] So Waterloo, Iowa is about 15% black.

[00:14:05] So it's a blacker than the country

[00:14:07] in a very white state.

[00:14:09] So there were not a ton of black folks

[00:14:11] but there were still enough black folks

[00:14:13] to segregate us.

[00:14:14] And I grew up in a segregated black community.

[00:14:18] So she got off the Illinois Central Railroad

[00:14:20] in Waterloo, Iowa.

[00:14:21] Only to have our hopes of the mythical

[00:14:23] Promised Land shattered.

[00:14:24] When she learned the Jim Crow

[00:14:26] did not end at the Mason Dixon line.

[00:14:28] Grandma, as we called her,

[00:14:30] found a Victorian house

[00:14:32] and a segregated black neighborhood

[00:14:33] on the city's east side

[00:14:34] and then found the work

[00:14:36] that was considered black women's work

[00:14:38] no matter where black women lived.

[00:14:40] Cleanly white people's homes.

[00:14:42] That two struggled to find

[00:14:44] Promise in this land.

[00:14:45] In 1962 at age 17

[00:14:47] he signed up for the army.

[00:14:49] Like many young men,

[00:14:51] he joined in hopes of escaping poverty.

[00:14:53] But he went into the military for

[00:14:55] another reason as well.

[00:14:56] A reason common to black men.

[00:14:58] That hoped that if he served his country

[00:15:01] his country might finally treat him

[00:15:03] as an American.

[00:15:05] The army did not end up being his way out.

[00:15:07] He was passed over for opportunities.

[00:15:09] His ambition stunted.

[00:15:11] He would be discharged under

[00:15:13] murky circumstances

[00:15:14] and then labor in a series of

[00:15:16] service jobs for the rest of his life.

[00:15:18] Like all the black men in my family

[00:15:20] and women in my family

[00:15:21] he believed in hard work.

[00:15:23] But like all the black men

[00:15:24] and women in my family

[00:15:25] no matter how hard he worked

[00:15:27] he never got ahead.

[00:15:29] So when I was young

[00:15:31] that flag outside our home

[00:15:33] never made sense to me.

[00:15:35] How could this black man

[00:15:36] having seen firsthand

[00:15:37] the way his country

[00:15:38] abused black Americans

[00:15:40] the way it refused to treat us

[00:15:42] as full citizens

[00:15:43] proudly fly its banner.

[00:15:45] My father had endorsed

[00:15:47] a tour of segregation in housing

[00:15:49] and school discrimination

[00:15:51] in employment and harassment

[00:15:53] by the police.

[00:15:55] He was one of the smartest people I knew

[00:15:57] and yet by the time I was a work study

[00:15:59] student in college

[00:16:00] I was earning more

[00:16:01] an hour than he did.

[00:16:03] I didn't understand his patriotism.

[00:16:05] It deeply embarrassed me.

[00:16:07] I had been taught in school

[00:16:09] through cultural resources

[00:16:10] that the flag really wasn't ours

[00:16:12] that our history as a people

[00:16:14] began with enslavement

[00:16:15] and that we had contributed little to this

[00:16:17] great nation.

[00:16:18] It seemed that the closest thing

[00:16:20] black Americans could have

[00:16:21] the cultural pride

[00:16:22] was to be found in our vague connection

[00:16:24] to Africa

[00:16:25] a place we had never been.

[00:16:27] That my dad felt so much honor

[00:16:29] in being an American struck me

[00:16:31] as a marker of his degradation

[00:16:33] of his acceptance

[00:16:35] of our subordination.

[00:16:36] Not only seen no young people here.

[00:16:38] All right, any young people here?

[00:16:40] I guess it depends how you define you.

[00:16:43] I mean, besides me.

[00:16:45] I always liked to point out

[00:16:48] this line for the young folks in the wrong

[00:16:52] because like most young people

[00:16:55] I thought I understood so much

[00:16:57] when in fact I understood so little.

[00:17:00] My father knew exactly what he was doing

[00:17:03] when he raised that flag.

[00:17:05] He knew that our people's contributions

[00:17:07] to building the richest and most powerful nation

[00:17:09] in the world were indelible

[00:17:11] and that the United States simply

[00:17:13] would not exist without us.

[00:17:15] Thank you.

[00:17:16] Thank you for that beautiful

[00:17:27] reading and just like taking us to a place

[00:17:29] where we can understand your origin story.

[00:17:32] But in the preface,

[00:17:34] we started off with this sentence

[00:17:36] I was baby 15 or 16

[00:17:38] when I first came across the day 1619.

[00:17:41] But I know for a fact

[00:17:43] you had your words

[00:17:46] imprinted

[00:17:47] in the first impression of just like the power

[00:17:49] of words long before that.

[00:17:51] And so could you tell us about

[00:17:53] 1988 when you were 11 years old

[00:17:57] and your very first letter to the editor was published

[00:18:00] and how that influenced you

[00:18:02] so then become that 15 year old

[00:18:04] being like, you know,

[00:18:06] what is this date 1619?

[00:18:08] Sure.

[00:18:09] So I guess you saying I was 11

[00:18:11] and 1988.

[00:18:13] This spell is my young comments.

[00:18:16] Young it hard.

[00:18:19] It was young ones.

[00:18:21] So yeah, I know this is going to be a tremendously difficult

[00:18:26] for y'all to believe because I'm so very fabulous now

[00:18:29] but I was a painfully nerdy child

[00:18:33] and I loved reading my dad

[00:18:38] even though he didn't have a lot of formal education

[00:18:40] was a voracious reader.

[00:18:42] My mom was a voracious reader.

[00:18:44] She was a little more aware

[00:18:47] though mostly, you know,

[00:18:49] Louis Lomor, Westerns

[00:18:51] and Danielle still novels.

[00:18:53] And we used to watch a lot of documentaries

[00:18:56] in my dad subscribed to two newspapers

[00:18:59] so every day I would read the daily paper

[00:19:02] with my dad and our state paper with my dad.

[00:19:05] And I just remember as a kid

[00:19:08] when we wanted, not wanted

[00:19:10] but if we were to see black people in the newspaper

[00:19:13] we would look at the book.

[00:19:14] But the only place black people occurred

[00:19:16] was in the crime log

[00:19:17] and we would look for the names of people we might know.

[00:19:20] And yet because I was very nerdy or just, you know,

[00:19:24] a thinking child

[00:19:26] I knew that most people in my neighborhood

[00:19:28] weren't committing crimes

[00:19:30] and that most people in my neighborhood

[00:19:31] were doing normal things

[00:19:33] that every other person was doing

[00:19:35] and yet that wasn't reflected

[00:19:37] in the newspaper.

[00:19:38] So I pretty young started thinking about

[00:19:42] who had control of narrative

[00:19:45] and who was writing these stories

[00:19:47] and why was the newspaper

[00:19:50] and what we saw on the TV news so different

[00:19:52] from the reality.

[00:19:53] I was being bus to white schools

[00:19:55] by that point

[00:19:56] and I started being bus

[00:19:57] as part of a school desegregation program

[00:20:00] in the second grade.

[00:20:02] And so I also knew

[00:20:03] that the landscape

[00:20:07] of inequality

[00:20:09] like I watched it through the school bus window

[00:20:11] and I was like, oh, I could see

[00:20:13] everything get better

[00:20:15] when we got close to the white side of town

[00:20:16] but I also saw that their parents

[00:20:18] worked these white color jobs

[00:20:20] which to me as a child

[00:20:22] didn't see that hard.

[00:20:24] But their houses were all bigger

[00:20:26] and nicer

[00:20:27] and then I'm seeing my black family

[00:20:29] and my black neighbors working

[00:20:31] really hard jobs, like me packing plants,

[00:20:34] coming home bloody

[00:20:36] and knuckles swollen

[00:20:38] and not being able to make a fist

[00:20:40] because they've carved beef carcasses all day

[00:20:42] and yet their houses don't look like that.

[00:20:44] Right?

[00:20:45] And if you watched the documentary,

[00:20:48] you listened to the podcast,

[00:20:49] you know what I talked about my uncle

[00:20:50] and he was like my favorite uncle

[00:20:52] he's the one who shows up at my

[00:20:54] noted in graduation where I read from head to toe.

[00:20:57] It was glorious.

[00:20:59] I have to say

[00:21:01] red head, shirt, tie, pants, and gators.

[00:21:05] Sorry, I just me and her y'all.

[00:21:09] I'll get to the point now, promise.

[00:21:11] And you know, so I've seen

[00:21:15] these hard work and folks like my uncle

[00:21:17] worked hard physical jobs,

[00:21:20] often jobs that didn't have health insurance

[00:21:23] and he loved nice things.

[00:21:26] He had the best furniture rent to own, goodbye.

[00:21:29] And we laugh at that, like he didn't know

[00:21:32] how to spend his money

[00:21:34] but he couldn't afford those nice things

[00:21:36] any other way.

[00:21:37] And he wanted his children to grow up in a nice house.

[00:21:39] So I'm observing all of these

[00:21:41] realities versus what we're seeing

[00:21:44] and I also came from a very politically engaged

[00:21:47] household.

[00:21:48] My mom was president of our local

[00:21:50] asked me, union both of my parents were union

[00:21:52] my grandfather.

[00:21:54] So I was watching politics and I was a place

[00:21:57] nobody cares about except every four years.

[00:22:00] I'm getting to the point, promise you.

[00:22:02] Right?

[00:22:03] And I was my first one

[00:22:05] and I was like, don't want to be

[00:22:09] so far.

[00:22:10] And we've been living there for 4 years

[00:22:12] and now we lost our 1 claim to

[00:22:14] fang because they moved the primary

[00:22:15] but he used to, to recently every 4 years

[00:22:17] right everyone cares

[00:22:18] because of the pride parents.

[00:22:20] So 1980 was the year Jesse Jackson

[00:22:22] was running to become president.

[00:22:23] And 11 year old Nicole was a parent.

[00:22:25] I don't even remember this, honestly.

[00:22:26] I don't remember writing this letter,

[00:22:28] but it's a record.

[00:22:29] It's all in the record.

[00:22:30] We'd never had a black president, obviously.

[00:22:33] And he just seemed like a good person.

[00:22:34] And he talked to black folks.

[00:22:35] But he also was an Iowa talking to disenfranchised white farmers

[00:22:40] and telling them he wanted significant amount of the white

[00:22:44] vote in Iowa more than they thought.

[00:22:45] But he didn't win the primary.

[00:22:47] So 11-year-old Nicole was outraged.

[00:22:49] And so I write a letter to the editor.

[00:22:51] And I say, we actually have the letter.

[00:22:56] And I said that I thought Jesse Jackson was a great candidate.

[00:23:00] And he should have gotten more support.

[00:23:01] And I thought he didn't get support because he was black.

[00:23:04] And that one day, we would have a black president,

[00:23:06] whether my Iowa folks liked it or not.

[00:23:09] You predicted it early.

[00:23:10] I did.

[00:23:14] So I dashed the letter off.

[00:23:16] I walked down to the post office, meal the letter.

[00:23:20] And in every day I come home and I open the paper

[00:23:22] to the opinion section to see if they printed my letter

[00:23:25] to the editor one day they did.

[00:23:27] And I'll never forget how that felt.

[00:23:31] Because I saw my name in the paper.

[00:23:33] And I saw me seeing something in society

[00:23:37] that I thought was unfair, particularly involved in black folks.

[00:23:40] And that I could write about it.

[00:23:42] And maybe Jesse Jackson never became president.

[00:23:44] So I couldn't change the world.

[00:23:46] But I could force people to at least have to acknowledge

[00:23:50] this wrong or to think about it.

[00:23:53] And so I think that that was the beginning of me thinking

[00:23:56] that maybe journalism was a career I might want to have.

[00:24:00] And I didn't know any journalists.

[00:24:01] I didn't know any black folks who had really professional

[00:24:04] careers outside of my teachers.

[00:24:07] But I did start to think that this was something

[00:24:10] I might want to do understanding that there

[00:24:12] is a power in being able to shape narrative.

[00:24:16] I don't mean to keep quote in dates,

[00:24:18] but you have been a journalist for 20 years.

[00:24:22] And this project has meant such a lifeline for many of us

[00:24:26] because it's changed the perspective.

[00:24:28] And it's now on the record.

[00:24:30] And what you're addressing really is,

[00:24:31] it's not just history, it's memory, right?

[00:24:34] So we're addressing a ratio, which you just mentioned.

[00:24:37] Now that the project is taken on so many iterations,

[00:24:40] we are celebrating the paperback release.

[00:24:42] How does it feel to be in this moment

[00:24:43] and to watch the evolution?

[00:24:45] Did you ever imagine that it would be so significant?

[00:24:49] Make so many people mad because it has made so many folks mad.

[00:24:54] I just love to hear your moment right now

[00:24:56] how you reflect and think about the project.

[00:25:04] Make your space offices is proud to sponsor this episode

[00:25:07] on the Mahagini Books Podcast Network.

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[00:25:14] creatives, and work from home professionals.

[00:25:17] We do this through private offices,

[00:25:19] co-working spaces, and a host of other resources,

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[00:25:58] Yeah, so one thing we just say,

[00:26:00] I have the best fucking enemies.

[00:26:03] Hey!

[00:26:04] Like, it's the people who hate me, hate you,

[00:26:08] you are on the right side of history, right?

[00:26:10] Right there you go.

[00:26:11] No.

[00:26:13] I do have amazing enemies.

[00:26:18] So no one could have predicted what would happen

[00:26:24] once this project went into the world.

[00:26:28] No one is more in all that five years later.

[00:26:32] I'm still out here every single week,

[00:26:36] speaking to people about the 1619 project.

[00:26:40] I couldn't have imagined it.

[00:26:42] And I knew that I knew this work was important.

[00:26:47] Like, I knew even not knowing if anyone would read it

[00:26:51] anybody would care if I had somehow convinced the times

[00:26:55] to invest all of this resources into the blackish

[00:26:58] that they ever did, like, would they,

[00:27:02] y'all got to lighten up.

[00:27:04] Y'all got to lighten up y'all.

[00:27:05] Listen, I cast a lot in that tail jokes.

[00:27:09] This is how we survive.

[00:27:11] And I say this for real.

[00:27:13] I say this for real.

[00:27:14] Listen, this work is not easy.

[00:27:19] It's been a long five years.

[00:27:21] I'm in a good place now, but trust me when you have the president

[00:27:26] of the United States attacking your work

[00:27:28] where you have sitting senators legislating against your work

[00:27:31] when people are threatening you threaten in the burn down,

[00:27:34] your mother's house, like that shit is real.

[00:27:38] And if you followed me on Twitter, you know I didn't always

[00:27:42] handle it well.

[00:27:44] I mean, I feel like you were appropriately.

[00:27:49] There were times I probably should have put the phone down.

[00:27:56] But now five years out what I've come to understand is

[00:28:02] you don't see that type of power align against work

[00:28:06] that is not having impact.

[00:28:08] You just don't.

[00:28:14] And it has been to me and you're exactly right.

[00:28:18] Like people call the 1619 Project, they work of history,

[00:28:20] but I correct that all the time.

[00:28:22] It's foremost the work of journalism

[00:28:25] and more than that is the work of memory

[00:28:27] because what I understood at the age of 15

[00:28:30] when my black studies teacher put the wrong benefits

[00:28:34] before the Mayflower, my hand.

[00:28:36] And I learned about a ship called The White Lion

[00:28:38] for the first time, even though we all knew about the Mayflower

[00:28:41] in 1620, the White Lion had been completely erased,

[00:28:45] even though it happened.

[00:28:46] What I understood is what they were calling history

[00:28:48] was not history at all.

[00:28:50] That all these things happened.

[00:28:52] What they were really talking about was memory

[00:28:54] and who had the power to decide

[00:28:56] what will we remember about our country

[00:28:58] and what will we be forced to forget?

[00:29:00] And why does memory matter?

[00:29:02] Because memory determines how we see ourselves

[00:29:05] and what we allow.

[00:29:07] Right?

[00:29:08] It is memory that drives narrative,

[00:29:10] and narrative that drives policy.

[00:29:12] And so if you erase the foundation

[00:29:15] that slavery played, then you try to fix black people

[00:29:18] instead of fix the systems

[00:29:19] that have created the conditions that black people live in, right?

[00:29:22] So that's the danger.

[00:29:23] Yeah.

[00:29:25] And what I've understood is, again,

[00:29:28] you see a room like this, how many times

[00:29:31] I have people say I never learned any of this?

[00:29:35] The 1619 Project in unearth new history,

[00:29:37] we don't claim to have found something

[00:29:39] that no one ever knew before.

[00:29:41] But what we did was, we made it in a form for a popular reader,

[00:29:47] a common reader like myself, not someone

[00:29:49] who's taken history classes.

[00:29:52] It wasn't behind the membrane of a university.

[00:29:55] It was for my folks back home

[00:29:58] for people who want information,

[00:30:01] but haven't been able to get it

[00:30:03] and the way that we connected

[00:30:05] to what's happening in the country right now.

[00:30:07] Because the other thing we want to do

[00:30:09] is when we remember it, remember it

[00:30:12] as being completely disconnected from the reality

[00:30:14] of America today.

[00:30:16] So this document, right?

[00:30:17] This document called the Constitution.

[00:30:20] We have six justices right now who say,

[00:30:25] we have to read that as an original document.

[00:30:28] We have to interpret everything about America

[00:30:31] through some shit that they wrote 200 and something years ago.

[00:30:34] That matters, but the fact that most of the men

[00:30:37] who wrote it owned our ancestors does it matter.

[00:30:40] Right?

[00:30:41] Right?

[00:30:42] So some history they want to say is shaping our society

[00:30:45] every day, but other histories, particularly

[00:30:48] the history that don't glorify the nation

[00:30:50] that don't treat us as an exception or nation,

[00:30:52] they want to forget.

[00:30:54] But what we have found though is a lot of Americans

[00:30:57] don't want to forget.

[00:30:58] Yeah.

[00:30:59] They didn't know they were forgetting.

[00:31:00] They were being right.

[00:31:01] We were had a forced amnesia,

[00:31:03] a mandated ignorance, and that once it's

[00:31:06] like the red pill in the matrix, y'all see the matrix.

[00:31:10] The good one, not the new one.

[00:31:11] Oh.

[00:31:13] Once you see that you take that red pill

[00:31:16] and you suddenly realize, I mean for black folks

[00:31:18] it's not astounding.

[00:31:20] Like we know we're in a country that's working against us.

[00:31:24] But we still didn't have the math.

[00:31:25] Like most of us still couldn't tell you exactly

[00:31:28] what are the systems, how were they set up?

[00:31:30] What, you know.

[00:31:31] And so having that math is helpful.

[00:31:33] And then for people who aren't black,

[00:31:35] some of this is absolutely astonishing, right?

[00:31:38] Because you're like, I've learned the history

[00:31:40] of a country that never existed.

[00:31:42] And that's what we have all collectively been lied to.

[00:31:46] And there was a power in that knowing.

[00:31:48] And so I think that is why people continue

[00:31:50] to engage to grapple with and why so many people

[00:31:54] who know they can't make a better argument

[00:31:57] because they don't have one.

[00:31:58] They're not on the side of right.

[00:31:59] I want to ban these ideas and books.

[00:32:01] Yeah.

[00:32:02] Thank you.

[00:32:03] I mean, we've gotten clapin' throughout this whole conversation

[00:32:08] because everything you're saying, it resonates so much.

[00:32:11] You know the original goal of the project was to reframe

[00:32:13] history to make it so explicit that slavery was built.

[00:32:18] It's the foundation of everything in the United States history, right?

[00:32:21] And I think about the foundational text,

[00:32:23] I read as a young person.

[00:32:25] And for me the two books were the narrative and Frederick Douglass

[00:32:27] which was published in 1845.

[00:32:31] And then the other one was the autobiography of Rockham Acts,

[00:32:33] which is published in 1965, right?

[00:32:35] So to be, and I'll say some days,

[00:32:37] I was in high school in 1996.

[00:32:39] And for that to be like the moment I gave me clarity

[00:32:42] and then to have your book come out in 2019

[00:32:45] to give it context and make it more accessible

[00:32:47] to understand the experiences of those two books

[00:32:50] and a more contemporary viewpoint.

[00:32:52] It was so enlightening.

[00:32:53] So it makes me think about future generations, right?

[00:32:56] Like there's gonna not gonna be a high school student

[00:32:57] that only has those two books, the narrative and Malcolm Acts.

[00:33:01] So give them some level of perspective

[00:33:03] understanding of what it means to be black in America.

[00:33:06] We now have your book.

[00:33:08] And so I wanna really talk about future generations

[00:33:11] and the work that you're doing.

[00:33:12] I'm thinking about 1619, the Freedom School in Waterloo.

[00:33:15] I'm thinking about the literary salon,

[00:33:17] such a great name.

[00:33:18] I'm thinking about even the moment of handing out

[00:33:20] the magazines at Afropunk.

[00:33:22] I was there.

[00:33:23] I was there and I remember cutting out the magazine

[00:33:25] and putting it on my vision board

[00:33:26] to be like, oh, I need to dig further into this.

[00:33:29] Whether you're a dull, whether you're 16,

[00:33:32] whether you're 11, you are cradying a space for us

[00:33:35] to understand how to model it

[00:33:38] and how to make it accessible,

[00:33:40] but also how to change policies.

[00:33:43] I'm going in a roundabout way,

[00:33:44] but I'm just really curious to hear

[00:33:46] how you feel about the work that you're doing

[00:33:48] to change young minds at this moment.

[00:33:52] Thank you for that.

[00:33:55] I started having so many thoughts

[00:33:58] when you were asking that question,

[00:33:59] so I'm gonna get there, but sorry.

[00:34:01] You know, it's like we're sitting in Washington DC.

[00:34:07] We're sitting a few blocks from a capital

[00:34:10] that was built by enslaved people.

[00:34:13] Where they put the Statue of Freedom,

[00:34:16] like the woman on top of the Capitol

[00:34:18] is the Statue of Freedom

[00:34:20] and enslaved workers placed that on top of the Capitol.

[00:34:24] And slave people help build the White House, right?

[00:34:28] You would have dignitaries coming from around the world

[00:34:32] into the Capitol where enslaved people were being bought

[00:34:36] and sold.

[00:34:38] And they want to somehow disconnect that

[00:34:42] from the country that these people built.

[00:34:45] This is the, if you fundamentally believe

[00:34:49] the United States begins in 1776 with ideals of liberty,

[00:34:53] that does not explain January 6th, y'all.

[00:34:57] That does not explain the way America is exceptional

[00:34:59] in ways we should not be proud of.

[00:35:02] Why were the most carceral nation in the world?

[00:35:04] Right?

[00:35:05] Why we have the highlight is rates of child poverty

[00:35:07] of the industrialized world,

[00:35:08] the greatest income inequality,

[00:35:10] the only place where of all the Western democracies

[00:35:13] and some places that aren't democracies like Cuba

[00:35:16] where if you go to the doctor

[00:35:18] and that depends on if you have a job

[00:35:20] that wants to give it to you.

[00:35:22] Right, all of this is a legacy of slavery.

[00:35:24] And yet we've been taught that these things are disconnected

[00:35:27] and by the way, why is that important?

[00:35:29] Is because the legacy of slavery

[00:35:31] aren't just hurting black folks.

[00:35:33] Yes, yes.

[00:35:34] There's more poor white children in America.

[00:35:37] We are disproportionately poor,

[00:35:39] but numerically there are more poor white children

[00:35:41] than poor black people, right?

[00:35:43] There are more white people without insurance,

[00:35:45] than black people without insurance.

[00:35:47] When Southern states, the former Confederacy,

[00:35:50] refuse to expand Medicaid, right?

[00:35:52] They refuse to take government-free government money

[00:35:55] to give poor people healthcare.

[00:35:58] They were fucking over a whole bunch of poor white people too.

[00:36:01] Yes.

[00:36:02] But they would do that if they think they will hurt more of us.

[00:36:06] Yes.

[00:36:07] So if you don't understand that history,

[00:36:09] you have to understand that the legacy is a slavery.

[00:36:12] Our corrupting, they are corroding what could be

[00:36:16] an amazing country for all of us.

[00:36:18] There is enough.

[00:36:19] There's enough for all of us.

[00:36:20] Let's be clear.

[00:36:22] We can do, I'm the worst person in the interview,

[00:36:28] because I just talk about what I want to talk about.

[00:36:31] I'm the worst person, but listen, we can do reparations,

[00:36:38] which I feel we are more, moreally and economically obligated

[00:36:42] to and also raise poor people of all race out of poverty.

[00:36:47] You can tell you how we know.

[00:36:48] Do you remember this thing called a pandemic?

[00:36:51] Do you remember how when all of a sudden,

[00:36:56] all of America was experiencing what black people experienced

[00:36:59] regularly?

[00:37:01] Right?

[00:37:02] High unemployment rates, housing instability,

[00:37:06] inability to access healthcare.

[00:37:08] We printed three to six trillion dollars overnight.

[00:37:14] Over night.

[00:37:16] And all of a sudden, you couldn't evict people.

[00:37:19] We had universal housing.

[00:37:21] Anybody who wanted to go get that shot didn't have to show

[00:37:24] a liquor paper, a dollar, nothing.

[00:37:25] You showed up and you got the shot.

[00:37:28] We paid people income, universal income.

[00:37:32] My cousin Shamir, who's in the 1619 documentary

[00:37:34] in the capitalist's episode, started working at 15 years old.

[00:37:38] The most she ever made was when she got laid off her COVID

[00:37:41] and got that check from the government to stay at home.

[00:37:44] The most she ever made, and she cried about it,

[00:37:48] because she was like, I have been able to save $1,000

[00:37:51] for the first time in my life only because all these people

[00:37:54] are dying out here.

[00:37:56] That's the first time America cared about me.

[00:37:59] So let's be clear, this history, this history is affecting

[00:38:04] all of us.

[00:38:05] We could all choose something different.

[00:38:07] And I do think that's the power.

[00:38:09] Is it shows us that the inequality we see is constructed?

[00:38:13] Yes.

[00:38:14] It's not natural.

[00:38:15] It's not innate.

[00:38:15] We have to be this way when Jeff Bezos can go to the moon

[00:38:19] just because he thought it would be cool.

[00:38:21] And thank the low wage Amazon worker who has to pee in a jug

[00:38:25] because they won't give you a bathroom break

[00:38:27] and he doesn't see any dissonance there.

[00:38:30] That tells you that there is a problem.

[00:38:32] And so they keep us, most of us,

[00:38:35] in a perpetual state of struggle or a few paychecks away

[00:38:39] from struggle by making us think that if you help,

[00:38:43] black folks who are undeserving.

[00:38:45] So you're going to suffer, but you not

[00:38:47] got ever had to suffer like them.

[00:38:48] So we've got to grapple with this.

[00:38:50] OK, now back to the question.

[00:38:51] Sorry, y'all.

[00:38:52] But listen.

[00:38:54] I got limited time on this planet.

[00:38:56] I got to say where I got to say.

[00:38:59] So they want to tell us that history is irrelevant.

[00:39:01] Right?

[00:39:03] It's not.

[00:39:04] Anybody in this room, I hope, understands that.

[00:39:06] And I hope when you read the 1619 book,

[00:39:08] you don't stop at the book.

[00:39:10] You go to the end notes.

[00:39:12] There are 1,000 end notes.

[00:39:13] And then start to read the primary documents

[00:39:17] and the deep historical research that is based upon.

[00:39:20] And you will blow your mind like you won't

[00:39:22] be able to see America the same.

[00:39:24] But not in a way that is destructive.

[00:39:26] See, that's what they say is that if you learn

[00:39:29] that you want to destroy America, no,

[00:39:32] we want to destroy that version of America.

[00:39:35] We want to actually be the America of our highest ideas

[00:39:38] that actually loves our fellow Americans

[00:39:40] enough to say in the richest country in the world.

[00:39:43] Somebody shouldn't have to sleep on the street.

[00:39:45] That's the America that we're trying to build here.

[00:39:47] It's a different America, but that's the right one.

[00:39:49] Now, back to what you were saying.

[00:39:51] Yes, people, the young people.

[00:39:53] I, there aren't that many.

[00:39:57] Are you looking young?

[00:39:58] How are you?

[00:40:00] OK, never mind.

[00:40:01] I'm not going to.

[00:40:01] I'm trying.

[00:40:02] I'm trying.

[00:40:03] I'm not going back home, Mary.

[00:40:04] We got to get some kids up in here.

[00:40:06] OK, listen.

[00:40:10] I think it's important to know, again,

[00:40:13] I come from working class, people, extremely working

[00:40:18] class people in Waterloo, Iowa.

[00:40:21] I worked two jobs I was 30 years old.

[00:40:24] I had a master's degree and I was writing for the newspaper

[00:40:28] and I was selling mattresses on the side.

[00:40:30] I had a degree from Notre Dame

[00:40:32] and I worked full time in college admissions

[00:40:36] and I worked night and weekends a subway.

[00:40:39] I say that to say, it can be easy.

[00:40:43] Sometimes when you see someone who is now

[00:40:45] gotten in a particular position

[00:40:47] to think that they haven't struggled

[00:40:48] or that their success was inevitable.

[00:40:51] But mine was not.

[00:40:52] And when I go home, nobody in my family lives like me.

[00:40:56] I don't go home to that.

[00:40:58] I'm like many successful people where

[00:41:01] I'm always having to send money

[00:41:03] because somebody's rent can't get paid.

[00:41:07] A family member's going to get evicted.

[00:41:08] Their car node is late.

[00:41:10] This is my reality.

[00:41:12] So if I were to get where I am and say, I have made it,

[00:41:18] I would have failed myself.

[00:41:21] I would have failed our Lena Tillman

[00:41:22] who was born on a cotton plantation

[00:41:24] and the best jobs you ever had

[00:41:25] was cleaning the white house.

[00:41:28] The courthouse.

[00:41:30] I would have failed my father.

[00:41:32] And I would be failing my community

[00:41:34] and frankly, I would be failing myself.

[00:41:35] So it's always been important to me

[00:41:38] to try to be an institution builder,

[00:41:41] to try to be a door opener,

[00:41:42] to try to be like those black folks who pulled me through

[00:41:46] who showed me away.

[00:41:49] And so I, the first organization I founded

[00:41:54] was I-to-be-well society for investigative reporting.

[00:41:58] We are about to actually crazy enough

[00:42:01] have our tenure anniversary soon.

[00:42:03] And this is an organization that tries to train other

[00:42:07] black reporters who want to be investigative journalists

[00:42:09] in the traditional way to be well.

[00:42:11] Because folks did not, I never knew a black investigative

[00:42:15] reporter growing up.

[00:42:16] I didn't see a model of what I wanted to be.

[00:42:20] And my newsrooms also did not see a black woman

[00:42:22] and see someone who could be an investigative reporter.

[00:42:26] And then during the pandemic, I was talking to my best friend

[00:42:30] from Waterloo.

[00:42:32] She's an elementary school teacher.

[00:42:33] She teaches in the most segregated high-poverty elementary school.

[00:42:37] And she was talking about how few we all know this,

[00:42:39] how few of our kids, particularly our kids

[00:42:41] were already the most behind in school.

[00:42:43] We're logging on.

[00:42:44] They're having to share devices.

[00:42:46] Their parents were not the type of parents

[00:42:48] who had jobs, who could work from home.

[00:42:50] Like many of us had the luxury of doing.

[00:42:53] And I had been wanting to give back to my hometown

[00:42:54] for a long time.

[00:42:56] And I decided at that moment to found the 16, 19 freedom school.

[00:43:00] And so the 16, 19 freedom school is a free thank you.

[00:43:04] Thank you.

[00:43:05] Thank you.

[00:43:08] It's a free after-school literacy program that takes students

[00:43:12] to at least two grade levels behind the reading.

[00:43:15] And we teach them literacy through black history.

[00:43:18] And I'm going to tell y'all a secret.

[00:43:21] It's not their own black kids.

[00:43:23] Yes.

[00:43:24] Yes.

[00:43:25] Listen.

[00:43:29] I covered education for most of my career before I started

[00:43:35] the 16, 19 project.

[00:43:36] And I cannot tell you, I know all of you have heard it.

[00:43:39] How many times we've heard that black kids don't value education,

[00:43:43] black families don't value education, black kids don't want to read,

[00:43:45] black kids don't want to learn.

[00:43:47] I've never met a black child like that.

[00:43:49] Now I have learned black children who got the message

[00:43:51] about how we feel about their education.

[00:43:53] Right.

[00:43:54] But if a child doesn't want to read,

[00:43:57] it's most likely that reading is a struggle.

[00:44:00] And that if you give our children the same thing,

[00:44:03] you give other children more accurately,

[00:44:05] our children achieve the same things

[00:44:06] are the children achieved.

[00:44:08] So that was really, I know I wasn't doing anything special

[00:44:12] except, bring any resources that I could bring

[00:44:16] and getting certified black educators to teach our kids

[00:44:20] a literacy curriculum that didn't erase them.

[00:44:23] They didn't devalue them where they were able to feel empowered.

[00:44:27] And one of my greatest moments in that work

[00:44:31] was we have a chapter called the Children's March.

[00:44:35] And it's always our kids' favorite unit,

[00:44:37] because you're not learning about what grown people did.

[00:44:40] You're learning about children who took part in the movement.

[00:44:43] So two of our scholars went to school after that unit

[00:44:48] and they staged a protest against their teacher.

[00:44:50] That's not that.

[00:44:56] Now, it wasn't over nothing.

[00:44:57] I would have staged a protest over.

[00:44:59] But I was like, I love that.

[00:45:00] You took that lesson and went and applied your lesson

[00:45:04] in your school.

[00:45:07] So it's been, it's just so important for me to use.

[00:45:11] I don't know how long I'm going to have the platform I have.

[00:45:14] I don't know how long I'll be able to draw the resources

[00:45:17] that I can before as long as I can.

[00:45:20] I have to try to help build our communities up

[00:45:24] left-arcomemies.

[00:45:25] I understand, I'm not that special.

[00:45:27] I'm just not.

[00:45:28] Do you know how many people I know from my own community

[00:45:31] who were just as smart as I was?

[00:45:32] Worked as this hard.

[00:45:34] This stuff I did, I didn't get caught doing.

[00:45:38] I mean, we have to be honest.

[00:45:40] We all make mistakes.

[00:45:41] The margin of error for low-income black people

[00:45:43] though is only this big.

[00:45:45] Yes, absolutely.

[00:45:46] So the mistakes other people can recover from.

[00:45:49] We often don't.

[00:45:50] And so I'm very aware of that.

[00:45:52] I'm very aware of the position I am.

[00:45:54] I'm very aware of how people watch me.

[00:45:56] And the message is that I send.

[00:45:58] So everything is intentional.

[00:46:00] The red hair, the earrings, the way I talk, the cussie.

[00:46:04] Like it's all, it's not an act, but it's intentional.

[00:46:08] Like I know the uniform.

[00:46:10] I'm supposed to wear.

[00:46:11] I know the dialect that I'm supposed to speak in.

[00:46:14] And I know what I was told about the type of journalism

[00:46:16] I should do if I wanted to be successful.

[00:46:20] But to me, success is not worth it

[00:46:22] if you sell yourself out to get it.

[00:46:29] So we all have power in some way.

[00:46:33] Everyone doesn't have the same platform, the same reach

[00:46:36] that I have and I didn't always have it either.

[00:46:39] But we all have the ability to exercise power

[00:46:42] and influence in some way.

[00:46:44] If you're the first person in the space you're in

[00:46:47] and you end up being the last you failed to.

[00:46:50] Like don't come bragging to me about obviously

[00:46:52] first black person to do this.

[00:46:54] I don't care.

[00:46:54] You weren't the first one qualified.

[00:46:57] So don't be the last one.

[00:46:59] So we are a collective people that we have had to be a collective

[00:47:04] people and sometimes when we find success, we lose that.

[00:47:07] We lose that sense of obligation to community.

[00:47:10] And I just try in where I live, as you know,

[00:47:14] where I send my daughter to school,

[00:47:15] in choosing to reject UNC and come to Howard

[00:47:20] and build an institution there, it's just to...

[00:47:23] He's trying to get that message.

[00:47:26] I see feel like we're in church as we have the fans.

[00:47:28] We have the clapping.

[00:47:29] There's a lot of calling response

[00:47:31] if you're watching online there's so much, yes.

[00:47:33] We don't got no church wine.

[00:47:35] Yeah.

[00:47:35] Well, well, well, we can work on that.

[00:47:38] We can work on that.

[00:47:40] We will be taking questions in a second.

[00:47:43] So you can Marinette, I'm asking one more question.

[00:47:44] And if you have a question, please raise your hands

[00:47:46] or bring Mike over.

[00:47:48] OK, so my last question for you is regarding the contributors

[00:47:55] because you are the beautiful representative of this project

[00:47:58] but you work in tandem with so many profound, incredible people.

[00:48:03] You know, one of my favorite essays was the one Dorothy Roberts wrote,

[00:48:07] Kevin Cruz with a traffic piece.

[00:48:10] Like there were just so many things that I kept returning

[00:48:12] to and going through the Ednotes and going through

[00:48:15] just to make sure that I could get a deeper understanding

[00:48:17] of the history.

[00:48:18] Can you tell us just the evolution of the project

[00:48:20] with the contributors?

[00:48:21] And what it's been like to see them also

[00:48:24] who advocate on your behalf and work with them closely?

[00:48:27] Yes, I mean, yeah, I am the face of the project

[00:48:30] but the project does not exist without the dozens

[00:48:34] of writers, most of them, descendants

[00:48:37] of the institution of slavery, but not all of them.

[00:48:41] And I knew when I conceived of it that had to be a project

[00:48:44] that no person should have the hubris to think

[00:48:47] that you could tell the 400-year story of a people

[00:48:51] that had to be a collective telling.

[00:48:54] And so when I first pitched it, we had,

[00:49:00] I just basically created the wish list of scholars,

[00:49:05] writers, artists who work at an influence mine

[00:49:08] and we brought them to the times

[00:49:10] and we just held a massive brainstorming session

[00:49:13] with the conceit of the project.

[00:49:15] The conceit of the project always was

[00:49:17] to take modern American institutions

[00:49:20] and show the surprising connections to slavery.

[00:49:23] So if you open to the table of contents,

[00:49:25] all the essays have a single word title

[00:49:28] because I want you just reading the table of contents

[00:49:30] to be overwhelmed by all the ways of slavery

[00:49:33] is shaping our society that we haven't thought about,

[00:49:35] like traffic, right?

[00:49:38] Like when you're sitting in Atlanta or Chicago

[00:49:41] or Detroit or DC and you're like,

[00:49:44] I can see my exit and it's going to take me 30 minutes

[00:49:46] to get to it.

[00:49:47] This does not make sense.

[00:49:49] Well, it doesn't make sense if traffic, you know,

[00:49:52] highways were built to move people quickly through a city.

[00:49:55] But it does make sense if highways were built

[00:49:57] as a physical barrier to keep black communities

[00:49:59] divided off from white communities,

[00:50:00] which is what has happened.

[00:50:02] So when you go through Atlanta and you realize

[00:50:05] that that poorly designed traffic system was because

[00:50:08] they wanted to create physical barriers

[00:50:10] to segregate black communities,

[00:50:11] then it starts to make sense.

[00:50:13] So all of that, you had to have, you know,

[00:50:17] just a wide range of writers, different types of writers,

[00:50:20] there's journalists, there's historians,

[00:50:21] and sociologists.

[00:50:24] So being able to be in conversation with them

[00:50:27] to learn from them, to go back and forth

[00:50:30] through the iterations and the editing process,

[00:50:33] it's just been the greatest honor of my life

[00:50:35] and that so many people, especially once the project

[00:50:39] published an religion in the world

[00:50:41] and I could go back to folks

[00:50:43] that I couldn't get in the first project

[00:50:45] or didn't have time.

[00:50:46] They made time the second time, right?

[00:50:48] And Dorothy Roberts, you know,

[00:50:50] the race essay was won.

[00:50:53] There were certain essays that I knew I needed in there,

[00:50:56] one of my favorites is the essay disposition by Tyah Miles.

[00:51:00] She's an Afro-Indigenous scholar at Harvard.

[00:51:03] I knew there was a hole in the original project

[00:51:06] and that we didn't deal with settler colonialism.

[00:51:08] I wasn't quite sure how to do it in a project

[00:51:11] about African slavery.

[00:51:12] She did a perfect job of that just so many.

[00:51:19] But I wanna also just quickly,

[00:51:22] I wanna read something from the scholar,

[00:51:25] Sadia Hartman, because we talk a lot about the essays,

[00:51:29] but there's also short fiction and poetry,

[00:51:34] which is also, I mean, every part of my favorite part,

[00:51:37] but I really love the short fiction and poetry

[00:51:40] and that one gave us an opportunity to invite writers

[00:51:45] who you normally wouldn't see in a text like this, right?

[00:51:47] So Terry McMillan, who I grew up,

[00:51:50] love reading her novel.

[00:51:52] Oh, did.

[00:51:53] But you wouldn't typically see her in a non-fiction

[00:51:56] book about slavery or Barry Jenkins,

[00:52:00] who is the Oscar Winning Director of Moonlight

[00:52:03] has a short piece of pros in there.

[00:52:06] And what that came from was,

[00:52:08] because the project is in a history,

[00:52:11] we're not trying to tell a comprehensive story

[00:52:14] of America from 1619 to 2019.

[00:52:17] But we also understood Americans learned this history

[00:52:20] so poorly, there's just so much left out

[00:52:23] that people just don't know.

[00:52:25] So we started talking about,

[00:52:26] should we make a timeline of some sort?

[00:52:28] But then we said, well, what if we allowed black scholars,

[00:52:33] black writers to reimagine moments in history

[00:52:36] because black Americans, of course,

[00:52:38] are the only people in the history of the United States

[00:52:40] who were ever barred by law from reading and writing?

[00:52:44] What that means then is we have less documentary evidence

[00:52:47] than other groups have.

[00:52:48] We don't have as many of the letters going back and forth

[00:52:52] between family members.

[00:52:53] We don't have as many of the books of history and poetry

[00:52:56] being written by our folks.

[00:52:58] And so we have it, but it's not as much.

[00:53:00] And so so often when we have to read about these histories,

[00:53:03] we have to read about them through the white lens.

[00:53:06] And we wanted to reimagine.

[00:53:07] And I was actually at this art exhibit that was opening

[00:53:11] at the Lachma in LA a few weeks ago,

[00:53:15] and I came across this concept by the apartment

[00:53:20] that I was like, this is exactly what we were trying

[00:53:21] to do.

[00:53:22] We didn't have word for it.

[00:53:23] And she called it critical fabulation.

[00:53:25] Oh, I love that.

[00:53:27] I love that, right?

[00:53:28] And she said, it's a strategy that invites historians,

[00:53:32] artists and critics to creatively fill

[00:53:34] in the gaps of history, provides a resident framework

[00:53:38] for approaching work that in order to tell the truth,

[00:53:40] you need to invent what might be missing from the archives

[00:53:43] to quote, and this is actually not a city of apartment.

[00:53:46] This is the person that curator now saying

[00:53:48] how she translated that.

[00:53:50] You need to invent or I'm sorry, the artist

[00:53:53] saying how she translated that.

[00:53:54] In order to tell the truth, you need to invent

[00:53:57] what might be missing from the archive

[00:53:58] to collapse time to concern yourself with issues

[00:54:01] of scale to formally move things around in a way

[00:54:04] that reveals something more true than fact.

[00:54:07] Think about that, something more true than fact.

[00:54:10] So while Barry Jenkins didn't witness that,

[00:54:14] event that he writes about, the fact

[00:54:16] that we were never able to get that event through a black lens.

[00:54:20] I mean, she's actually writing something more true than fact.

[00:54:23] So that's why I love that part of the book as well.

[00:54:26] I love that.

[00:54:27] It's like you're speaking to the emotional residents, right?

[00:54:29] Like what is the interior life of everything?

[00:54:32] And I'm so glad you brought up the different authors,

[00:54:34] because in this book, you have C.C. Packer,

[00:54:36] you have the plate like, lignated, you have Yadjasi,

[00:54:39] like we have so many green to tell.

[00:54:41] Like, something is not on the side chest

[00:54:45] who writes the very last poem in the book.

[00:54:47] Every single copy of Lincoln, this is not only,

[00:54:51] again, it's correcting the record,

[00:54:53] but it is just such a beautiful tribute

[00:54:54] of just black literary greatness and beauty

[00:54:57] and just expansiveness.

[00:54:58] And I think everyone in this room,

[00:55:00] because all the, yes, yes, yes,

[00:55:02] is because we just agree and love you so much.

[00:55:04] And thank you.

[00:55:05] Thank you for just creating this work.

[00:55:07] We're in this altogether.

[00:55:08] Yes, we can clap for that.

[00:55:09] It's just really, it's really an honor.

[00:55:16] And also, the fact that we can laugh too,

[00:55:18] right, these are hard things, we'll be in love

[00:55:19] and we can cast it, we can be ourselves.

[00:55:21] We can just show up truly how we want to show up.

[00:55:24] And there's no performance in it.

[00:55:25] It's just like a realness.

[00:55:26] And so I'm really honored to be in conversation

[00:55:29] with you to be your friend, just like to do this

[00:55:33] with you, to do the work.

[00:55:34] And so now as I promise we will do,

[00:55:36] and I will go over time, are we doing questions?

[00:55:39] Oh, I'm so sorry.

[00:55:42] That's all right, we're not doing questions,

[00:55:44] but she's going to personally sign in to your books.

[00:55:47] She's gonna put her signature in it

[00:55:48] and I'll do a photo.

[00:55:49] So if you have your phone now,

[00:55:51] who wants to be getting to the sign in here,

[00:55:52] we won't do that.

[00:55:53] Yes.

[00:55:54] We're about to go rogue.

[00:55:55] Come on, we're all screwed.

[00:55:56] We're all screwed.

[00:55:57] We're gonna, no, I'm going rogue.

[00:55:59] We're gonna, we're doing two questions.

[00:56:01] Oh, there we go, there we go.

[00:56:03] Okay, I'll just go higher.

[00:56:05] I'm the one, I'm the one who has a flight to miss.

[00:56:07] Okay.

[00:56:08] Okay.

[00:56:09] I'll tell him this first time.

[00:56:10] All right, if I miss my flight,

[00:56:11] somebody's driving me back to New York.

[00:56:12] That's all I'm saying.

[00:56:14] Just only time for two, though.

[00:56:16] Yeah, first of all, I would say thank you so much

[00:56:19] for being born and being here.

[00:56:21] Thank you.

[00:56:22] I'd like to be a real person, but quickly,

[00:56:24] what do you see this project five and 10 years from now?

[00:56:28] What would you like to see?

[00:56:30] I don't even have a fit on it.

[00:56:31] That's a great question.

[00:56:33] I have learned one thing as a journalist,

[00:56:35] I never try to predict the future.

[00:56:39] Because I just don't like to be wrong.

[00:56:42] But my hope is that this project

[00:56:46] along with the activism,

[00:56:48] generations of activism by Black folks will lead to reparations.

[00:56:52] I'm just trying to do my role as narrative.

[00:56:59] There's other folks who have to write the laws,

[00:57:02] there's other folks who have to be on the ground,

[00:57:05] protesting and engaging in grassroots activism,

[00:57:07] but I try to create the narrative

[00:57:09] that makes these dreams possible.

[00:57:10] And I always say very last chapter of the book

[00:57:13] is called Justice.

[00:57:14] It is an argument for reparations.

[00:57:16] It is saying, if you read the book from the first page

[00:57:18] to the last, you are thinking person with a heart,

[00:57:22] you can only come away with one conclusion,

[00:57:24] which is that we are all the great debt,

[00:57:27] and that this country needs to pay it.

[00:57:28] So that's my hope.

[00:57:31] Now I won't say what will or will not happen,

[00:57:33] but I will say never in my lifetime

[00:57:36] has reparations been taken more seriously

[00:57:38] as a political issue.

[00:57:40] There's a reparations bill that's literally

[00:57:42] moving through the Senate in California, Illinois.

[00:57:45] Now has established an official state reparations commission.

[00:57:48] The orcas established an official state reparations commission.

[00:57:52] We just have to convince people that not only

[00:57:54] is this the right thing to do for black folks,

[00:57:56] but it's the right thing to do for America.

[00:58:05] Thank you.

[00:58:05] Thank you so much for being here for sharing

[00:58:07] everything that you said so far.

[00:58:09] I did have a question about memory.

[00:58:12] And it refers back to the question that was asked

[00:58:14] about the rule of fiction as a play in the text.

[00:58:17] I was wondering besides being able to be used

[00:58:20] in order to reach and strike evidence,

[00:58:22] that's missing from our record.

[00:58:24] What role has memory or role has a fiction play in memory

[00:58:28] in terms of how it's used in the text.

[00:58:30] And also, if you can speak to personally,

[00:58:32] if the relationship between fiction and memory

[00:58:36] has been able to help you or other people in your life

[00:58:38] be able to manage a stress that comes

[00:58:40] with talking about this work and doing this work.

[00:58:43] Oh, right, that's very tough.

[00:58:49] I know, my, that was deep.

[00:58:54] I mean, a clearly fiction plays a massive role

[00:58:59] in shaping memory whether for good or for ill.

[00:59:02] Right?

[00:59:03] I mean, if we contemplate that the highest grossing

[00:59:07] movie of all time was going with the wind.

[00:59:11] If we contemplate that the very first feature length

[00:59:14] film in the United States was birth of a nation,

[00:59:18] then we understand the role of the fiction has played

[00:59:21] in justifying anti-blackness and creating the narrative

[00:59:24] anti-blackness.

[00:59:25] And in fact, the birth of a nation led

[00:59:27] to the resurgence of the clan, birth of a nation

[00:59:30] justified the black codes and racial apartheid laws

[00:59:33] that followed the end of reconstruction.

[00:59:36] But I also think, of course, fiction can have the opposite effect.

[00:59:39] And this is surely why we see the book bands, right?

[00:59:45] That fiction gives us an imagination for what is possible.

[00:59:50] It allows us to build new worlds.

[00:59:52] It allows us to rethink the worlds that we think we know.

[00:59:55] And that is so powerful.

[00:59:59] I didn't always just, now now I mostly

[01:00:01] don't have a lot of time for fiction.

[01:00:03] I mostly read, you know, for research.

[01:00:06] But I remember the first time I saw black fiction

[01:00:11] because I was bus to white schools

[01:00:14] and roller thunder here in my cry.

[01:00:16] Yes, yes, yes.

[01:00:17] And I was like, there's a black girl on the cover.

[01:00:20] So I had to read that book and I saw myself

[01:00:24] and I'd never seen myself in a fiction book before.

[01:00:28] Right, so I do think if you don't come from a marginalized group,

[01:00:33] you don't understand how that erasure shakes your psyche

[01:00:39] and shapes your inability to see your own self as fully human.

[01:00:44] So fiction is critical.

[01:00:47] And like I said, being able to have fiction writers

[01:00:50] who could reimagine these moments through our heart,

[01:00:54] our gaze, our love was so critical to the book.

[01:00:58] And I don't know are you a writer?

[01:01:00] Yes.

[01:01:01] OK.

[01:01:02] Yeah, pointy.

[01:01:03] Do you write fiction?

[01:01:13] Hmm.

[01:01:14] It's one.

[01:01:21] So.

[01:01:23] Thank you.

[01:01:24] Thank you so much because it certainly has sheets.

[01:01:27] I think worked into the shape of the way that I

[01:01:30] relationship with myself and where maybe which

[01:01:32] can make it myself to others.

[01:01:35] So as we're speaking, part of the human speech.

[01:01:37] Thank you.

[01:01:39] And I'm so sorry about your mother.

[01:01:45] I could feel the pain of what you're going through

[01:01:48] and I'm sure everyone in here has experienced a devastating

[01:01:52] loss at least one time.

[01:01:56] And that's when also when I find myself writing

[01:01:58] it's so interesting that you say that because when I started

[01:02:03] writing the democracy, I say I didn't intend to write about

[01:02:06] my dad at all.

[01:02:07] This was not a personal essay.

[01:02:10] And I just kept coming back to him and wanting

[01:02:13] to understand this man that I did not understand.

[01:02:18] And it was through that that I started thinking about my dad

[01:02:22] in this flag and through reading words of Frederick Douglass

[01:02:27] or Martin Delaney, like Black folks who were like,

[01:02:29] we're not leaving this country.

[01:02:31] We built it as our land.

[01:02:33] And thinking if you could have been enslaved in this country

[01:02:36] and still claim this country that my dad was tapping into a

[01:02:41] legacy in understanding that I was incapable of having really

[01:02:45] until I wrote the essay.

[01:02:46] So I feel like the work that you're doing is also going to help

[01:02:50] you understand with a depth, the relationship with your mom

[01:02:55] that you probably couldn't even process and accept through

[01:02:59] the writing.

[01:02:59] So keep writing and maybe you're writing for yourself now,

[01:03:02] but maybe one day you'll be writing for us too.

[01:03:04] I know.

[01:03:14] I know.

[01:03:15] I know.

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