September 23, 2025 • 45 mins
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones joins My Legacy for a powerful conversation on truth, transformation, and love. As the creator of the New York Times’ landmark 1619 Project, she has reshaped how America understands its origins while facing fierce political backlash.
Joined by her husband Faraji Hannah-Jones, Nikole reflects on the personal roots of her journalism, their 25-year love story, and the bold parenting choices they've made in pursuit of justice and community.
Join hosts Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, Marc Kielburger, and Craig Kielburger for this profound discussion on legacy, education, and the power of partnership.
Together, they’ll reveal:
- The personal inspiration and national impact of the 1619 Project
- Why parenting with purpose means living your values—even when it’s hard
- How love and partnership fuel long-term change
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I wanted to do something really big and substantial to
force it a reckoning.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
She's the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who set the country
on fire with a project that dared to reframe history.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You know that this one project was considered so dangerous
that had to create an entire build or try to
rescue American history from this single work of journalism.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Nicole Hannah Jones created the groundbreaking New York Times Magazine
sixteen nineteen project and stood her ground when those in
power tried to tear it down.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Wow, I'm sitting here with chills throughout my body.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
It's easy to have values that you don't have to
live them.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Join hosts Martin Luther King the Third, Andrea Waters, King,
Mark Kilberger, and Craig Kilberger for an uncompromising conversation about hope,
democracy and raising the next generation to know their work.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I just remember going fifteen years of my life healing
in a quit in inferior as a black girl.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
What I know for fact because my daughter has never.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Felt welcome to my legacy. Today's guest, Nicole Hannah Jones,
is one of the most influential journalists of our time,
and it's changed how this country tells its history. Nicole,
we are so honored to have you with us here today,
and of course, in the true fashion of my legacy,
(01:27):
we always meet the person who knows you best. Would
you mind introducing us to your plus one today?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. Nice to
meet you all. And my plus one is my husband,
Frigi Hannah Jones, and we have been married for how
long twenty three years?
Speaker 5 (01:50):
So thrilled to have you with us here today and
can't wait to get to know both of you better.
But Nicole, if we could start with you, we'd love
to understand this incredible journey that you've had on him,
and to take us a little bit back to the origin,
because there's got to be a deep, rich part of
this origin story of why he became so passionate, Maybe
a memory from your childhood or your student days that
(02:12):
set you on this incredible life trajectory.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I grew up in a house of avid readers. My
mom was always very involved in social justice, and so
I always had a strong sense of writing and wrong,
of fairness and of wanting to root for the underdog.
When I was eleven years old, I read the newspaper
every day with my dad. When I was eleven years old,
(02:36):
I wrote my first letter to the editor to our
local paper. It was about Jesse Jackson's historic run to
become the first black president in nineteen eighty eight, and
he didn't do very well. I'm from Iowa and so
we had the first in the nation primary and he
didn't do very well. And I felt he was a
(02:57):
great candidate, and one of the reasons he didn't do
well was because he was a black man. So at
eleven years old, I wrote a letter to the editor
about that, and every day I would go home and
look at the paper and open to the opinion section,
and then one day they printed my letter, and I
just remember, even as a middle school student, feeling so
(03:18):
empowered by seeing my name in print and knowing that
I could see something in the world that I didn't
think was fair, and I could write about it and
I could make people pay attention to it. So I
think that's when I started to think about maybe writing
or journalism as something I might want to pursue. Of course,
I didn't know any journalists back then, and I wasn't
sure what I might want to do. But I think
(03:39):
that's where the first kind of kernel of an idea
that this might be a career for me began.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
I love it from the early days of activism.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
Farajie, you know we all love a good love story.
Can you share how you first met Nicole?
Speaker 7 (03:57):
Did you see?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I wish the viewers could see how you When Martin
asked that question, You're you just lit up.
Speaker 8 (04:05):
So I will say both of us met actually online, uh,
sometime in nineteen ninety nine on a program called AOL
instant Messenger that no longer exists, that no longer exists. Well, basically,
it was my name that pretty much attracted the inquiry
(04:26):
of Nicole. And so she popped up on my screen
one day, and of course we're all, you know, these
are the early days of the internet. And she pops
up on my screen and she says hello, and I'm like,
who is this? And the conversation started with you know,
I love your name. Then, of course, at the time
(04:47):
I was living in Atlanta, Uh, And of course our
conversation progressed more into what we like to do, what
we see ourselves doing, those types of things.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (04:57):
And then of course the phone call. We had a
phone call, and of course I loved the sound of
her voice, and she loved mine, and I hope she
still loves mama.
Speaker 7 (05:07):
I was gonna ask you, do you still love the
sound of it.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
I was immediately very attracted to Nicole, and so at
the time she said, I love Atlanta, I'm moving there.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
She moved to Atlanta. She actually arrived.
Speaker 8 (05:21):
We met each other November first, nineteen ninety nine, and
I was going to pick her up. And I think
the agreement we had was she doesn't like what she sees,
she will walk back into her apartment. If I don't
like what I see, I'll drive away. And it was
raining that day.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Wait wait, wait, so take So this is nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
There's no social media. There's no way for you to
see someone.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
So I think I like snuck into work late at
night and scanned used my office scanner and I scanned
a photo of myself and then he mailed in the
mailto kissed out. But I was always so scared, Like
you know, photos don't actually represent what the person really
looks like sometimes, so that's why I was like, Okay,
(06:05):
when when it's time for us to meet, I'm going
to stand outside and you just drive by or slow
and if.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
We don't you look at me, I'll look at you.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And if we don't like how each other looks, we'll
just I'll go back in the house, or you keep driving,
and no harm, no foul. So that it was actually
it was downpouring rain that was standing outside with the umbrella.
He drove by slowly, and I guess we both like
what we saw.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
What I got in the.
Speaker 8 (06:30):
Car, drove buying my key, my key, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
Mark, you see Martin's face. He's nervous already.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
There may or may not have been a time when
he had talked to someone on the phone and they
were driving past, but he kept he kept driving.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
So you understand my strategy.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
Now that millions of people are listening, What do you
have to say about this?
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Sometimes you had to keep driving, and I'm so glad
I did.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Oh good landed you landed on a table.
Speaker 7 (07:08):
Nicole.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
You are a young journalist when the two of you
all met, And now we'll fast forward fifteen years and
you create this truly truly incredible ground shifting issue of
The New York Times magazine, the sixteen nineteen project And
for those that don't know, the project reframed American history
by centering the legacy of slavery and the contributions of
(07:33):
black Americans into the narrative of the country. So I
am so curious as how did the idea take shape
and what did it take to bring this vision that
you had to life.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
So I.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Have been obsessed with the year sixteen nineteen since I
was fifteen years old. So I had been busted into
white schools starting in the second grade, and so I
was part of a small black population at my high
school that was busted as part of a school desegregation program.
And so they offered this one semester Black studies course
(08:11):
with a teacher named mister Ray Dow, the only black
men I ever had as an educator, and it transformed
my life. Suddenly I was exposed to all of these
books written by black people, all of these books about
black history. I didn't really realize there was so much
(08:33):
history that could be taught.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
I mean, of course.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I knew about your father, mister King, but as you
also know, maybe five black people was I ever really
taught about during Black History Month? And so I take
this course, and all of a sudden I realized that
the history that we had been taught was not even
close to all of the history that could be taught,
(08:58):
and that people had really intentionally decided that they were
going to erase most of the contributions of black people,
not just in America but in the world. And so
would ask mister Dill to give me books to read
on my own, and one of the books he gave
me was Laurn Bennis Before the Mayflower.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
So that was like a really transformative moment.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
For me, as a fifteen year old girl, to realize
that the history of black people in this land went
back even before the Pilgrims and the Mayflower, and understanding
that every American child learns about the Mayflower, but no
one thought it was important to teach us about another
ship that arrived a year earlier, called the White Lion.
So Frodi will tell you, as long as he's known me,
(09:45):
I've always talked about sixteen nineteen, and I used to
kind of jokingly say my journalism was getting longer and
longer and longer everything I wrote because I kept trying
to go further and further back in the past until
we got to the start of it, which was sixteen nineteen.
So as the four hundredth anniversary of that date was
approaching in late twenty eighteen. I just was thinking, this
(10:10):
most momentous date, that so many Americans still didn't know
the anniversary was coming up. And I'm at the New
York Times. I'm not a little girl in Waterloo, Iowa anymore.
I have the greatest journalism platform in the world. So
I wanted to do something really big and substantial to
force it a reckoning with that date and that the
(10:32):
institution of slavery is older than the country itself here,
and that there's few institutions in what would become the
United States that pre date us deciding to engage in
African slavery. So that's when I came up with the
idea to pitch a project that would take over the
entire issue of the New York Times magazine. And I
(10:56):
really didn't want it to be about the past, because
the thing that I believe strongly is that past and
our unwillingness to grapple with it honestly has shaped this
country in so many profound ways that we don't acknowledge.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
So I didn't want to talk just about the things
that we know that slavery shaped.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I wanted to talk about all of these areas of
American life that have been shaped by this legacy that
we don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
So that was really the idea.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
But it is something in some way that I have
been working towards my entire adult life. That's why I
majored in history and African American studies in college. It's
why I wanted to be a journalist who didn't just
write about the present, but who always wove history into
all of my works.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Wow, I'm sitting here with particularly as a black woman,
with chills throughout my body, and it's so amazing because
over these leading up to this interview, every woman that
I've told, every single black lady that I have said,
guess who we're having on the show, they all unequivocally
(12:07):
fangirled out. I just hope that you know and understand
what you are to our community and how loved you
are and on behalf of all of us. And we
have a seventeen year old girl, you all have a
fifteen year old. A sincere heartfelt from my belly.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Thank you, oh, thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I remember when the first issue came out and people
were lining up in New York city around the corner
on to get their hands on this magazine, like to
see that that hunger and that desire, people standing in
line for that, and it was just truly amazing. But
I know that you've said before that you wrote this
(12:55):
for your people, for your daughter, and for yourself, and
so as a mother, what were you hoping to give
your daughter through this work.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
I just remember.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Going fifteen years of my life feeling inadequate and inferior
as a black girl, feeling somehow that our history was shameful,
that the reason that they didn't include us in the
literature that we were being taught in the museums that
we went to, in the history books was because we
(13:32):
hadn't done anything, because surely if we had, if we
had contributed to society, we would be learning about that
it would be reflected. And so I just remember this
constant searching for identity and for some worth, and not
ever being a shame to be black, but just feeling
(13:55):
this kind of emptiness and not understanding, you know, how
our people were somehow different from every other people in
the world, that we hadn't contributed great things.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
And so.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
What I know for a fact is my daughter has
never felt that for a day, and that having this project,
and you know the children's book Born on the Water,
which I try to help black children understand, we too
have an origin story and it doesn't begin in a
slave ship. I dedicated that book to my daughter because
(14:28):
I just wanted her to never have to go up
with that sense of inadequacy, that searching for her worth.
And I know the beauty of what my husband and
I have been able to provide for her, and like
the legacy of this book is, she knows that. In
(14:50):
some ways, I think we do this as parents all
the time. Is what we struggled with, what we felt
was missing. We try to make sure that our children
don't experience is that and my child never has.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
What we did as parents.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
As our daughter was growing up, as we were intentional
before she got to school, before she was in daycare,
to teach her about Africa, right, to teach her the
story of Africa, to teach her the countries, to teach
her all of just the history so that when because
we knew obviously that she would hear about slavery, and
we were intentional that that wasn't her initial understanding of
(15:31):
our history of black people not that we have anything
to be embarrassed about for slavery, but for her to understand.
And so I remember once when she went to the
Civil and Human Rights Museum here on a school trip
in kindergarten, and they if you go up to the museum,
at the top level is a room of Africa. And
so Yolanda stood in the middle of the room and
told all of her classmates, and she stretches her hands out,
(15:54):
we all African Americans because civilization started in Africa.
Speaker 7 (15:59):
So she was looking at her white friends. It's like,
you're African too.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
Yes, we're building something real here, one episode at a time.
If you want to be part of it, to subscribe,
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Speaker 3 (16:16):
Now back to my legacy, Nicole.
Speaker 9 (16:19):
So much of what you do is absolutely remarkable. But
perhaps one of the most interesting statistics to share with
our audience is by the time you conceptualized and pitched
the A sixteen nineteen project, the time it was published
was only seven months, if I'm correct, which is absolutely remarkable. Froggie,
this is a question for you. What was it like
(16:41):
being beside your partner, your best friend during that journey
seeing her come up with this concept birth, the concept
seeing the intensity of the emotions and seeing the final product.
What was that journey like for her? But what was
that journey like for you?
Speaker 8 (16:53):
Well, you just used a key word, and that was birthing.
That's what this was like. It was like someone who
is conceived our second child in so many different ways,
you know, and going through all of the emotions of
a woman who is pregnant with your child. I had
(17:16):
no idea that it was going to be big as
it was. But generally when the cold goes through her
process and it feels like it's a burden on her,
and sometimes you know, you're catching all the you're catching
how moody she is. She doesn't feel like certain things,
and she feels you know, you know, pretty much nitpicking
and things at the around the house. But I mean,
(17:38):
you know, in your heart it was like, oh, this
is gonna be good, Like this is home cooking right here.
I knew every time she's stressing over her projects, I
know how impactful it's going to be for the betterment
of our people. And so you learn to be much
more tolerant because you understand this is important work and
it's for the betterment of our people and our community.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
I love because no other podcast other than having someone
with their partner, we get the honesty and the depth
and the richness of that conversation. I love it, Nicole.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Obviously, there was incredible love for this project, but also
fierce political pushback.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Can you take us.
Speaker 6 (18:19):
Into that moment and what it meant to be celebrated
and also tragically attacked at the same time.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I knew when the project published there would be kind
of a typical conservative outrage. You know, we were trying
to unsettle this established narrative of the United States. We
you know, we're trying to be provocative saying what if
our real origin is not seventeen seventy six with these
(18:49):
ideas of liberty, but sixteen nineteen with the practice of slavery.
So I expected, you know, I think when it first
came out, Knu Gingrid, you know, called a trash and
things like that, and and that, you know, I was
I'm I was used to that. But then uh, some
months in it started to change, and no one was
(19:11):
more shocked than me that this would be something that
the President of the United States, Donald Trump, would spend
all this time disparaging that you would see UH, sitting
senators introduce a bill against the project called the Saving
American History Act, which which actually I take great pride
in that. So you know that this one project was
(19:34):
considered so dangerous that you you had to create an
entire bill to try to rescue American history from this
single work of journalism. So I I I quickly realized
that this was much more powerful than you know, even
I could have hoped that you can measure the impact
(19:58):
by the opposition, and and.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
That I actually have amazing enemies.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Because if these folks are mad at at my work,
then then I've done the right thing. And I won't say,
you know, it's five years out now, so I have
gone through some some growth periods.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Uh. I didn't always respond well to it.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I this this was the most important project of my life.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
I cared deeply about it.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I was took so much care, and to see people
so flippantly attack it, I really felt I had to
be out there defending it at all times. And I
realized now that that wasn't necessary. That uh, the project
stood on its own.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I'm I'm a print reporter. I'm not I'm not a
TV reporter. I never expected people to know who I was,
or know my name, or to become some sort of symbol.
And and when you do that at and all of
a sudden, you become this symbol bulk to people who
love you, but also to people who revalue And one
of the people who reviles you is is the President
(21:11):
of the United States, who also was stoking violence consistently.
Then that requires an adjustment that it took me a
while to realize. You know, there was, like I call it,
like there was some cognitive cognitive dissonance because in my mind,
I'm still like Nicole Hannah Jones that only a few
(21:32):
people know if you're real nerdy and you care about
school segregation, which is what I was mostly writing about before.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
But now, all of a sudden, I was this symbolic person.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
That people were looking at and scrutinizing everything I tweeted,
everything I might say somewhere, And that can be a
really challenging transition to make.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
But looking back on it, I just feel, you know,
tremend pride. Like if Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Was so concerned about my work that he created an
entire presidential commission against it, I was.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Doing the right thing.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
You know, they began to pass these divisive concept laws
across the state. You know, in Georgia, you're not supposed
to teach sixteen nineteen. There were certain school boards Cop County,
other school boards that passed policy that you can't teach
the sixty nineteen project. And then they followed it with
(22:33):
those anti critical race theory laws, and then the divisive
concept laws, and now the attack on DEI I contributed
to this cultural reckoning that happened in twenty twenty, and
maybe I contributed to this racial reckoning that we're having
right now in the opposite direction.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
And I hope that you are just that you were
saying that, because let me just be clear that onus
is not on you. The awakening or reckoning that we're
going through in this country.
Speaker 7 (23:04):
Which were.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Its in process, is not on you. And learning about
our history is about it's not about collective guilt. It's
about collective responsibility.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Absolutely, And let me just be clear.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I do think they would like to blame us for
how they have responded to us trying to force a
reckoning with the reality of our country. And that's yeah,
that's their problem, that's not ours. And I believe strongly
that if they believe that the narrative and the truth
(23:42):
was on their side, they would just tell the truth.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
Rogie, I have a question for you as well, and
it's probably challenging to quantify, but what was the most
surprising outcome.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
I was particularly surprised at some of our public schools
that were, uh, you know, going to their school boards
and really looking at their historical curriculum, their history curriculum
and saying, look, you know, we need to we need
to re examine how we're teaching our kids history, particularly kids,
(24:18):
not just kids of color, but how history is being
taught to some of our affluent and white white kids.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
And so you had.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
School systems that really were looking to change their curriculum,
and of course that went with a lot of resistance
the community churches. I remember when the magazine came out,
it was like they did I think a brunch at Sylvia's.
(24:48):
It was just a women coming together, you know, talking
about the project. I mean, I never seen anything like it.
You're looking at an institution that is literally dying, you know,
the print industry is dying, and you saw don't say that,
but you've seen for the first time people like literally
(25:09):
going out buying a newspaper and reading it. You know,
you saw all of these people that were involved in
terms of trying to make sure that they can get
this their hands on the print copy itself, and it's
not just the copy, the whole newspaper, and they were
being sold out everywhere. I was extremely impressed by that
(25:29):
the most, And how how well the community has been
able to build a fence around this work and we're
still talking about it five five years later, and they're
still trying to diminish the work five years later, and
so I do think that history is definitely on our side,
and it will and it will prevail.
Speaker 9 (25:51):
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Speaker 3 (26:10):
Now, back to my legacy, both of my parents and
my grandparents, but certainly you know they attended segregated schools,
so you know, being born in nineteen seventy four, I'm
the first generation. I was the first generation of our
family to attend integrated schools.
Speaker 7 (26:28):
So when you walk around and you.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Look and see the history, wasn't that long ago Martin
integrated one of the elementary schools here in Atlanta. But
another issue that sparked that you helped spark a national
conversation about was education and segregated schools.
Speaker 7 (26:50):
And then you've written.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Very powerfully about your choice to send your daughter to
a majority black public school, a Title I school, instead
of a private school. And I'm sure I know that
both of you all thought long and hard about that decision.
So can you please let us know what was behind
that decision and how did you hope it would reframe
(27:12):
the conversation for parents.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
My very first job as a journalist was covering the
Durham Public Schools in Durham, North Carolina. And Durham was
a majority black city but still had a substantial white
population and had very segregated schools.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
And I just that I didn't want to be an
education reporter.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
That was just the first job I got, but became
very interested in educational inequality, and I started covering that
right during No Child Left Behind. So I was seeing
really the disastrous impacts of a federal policy that was
(27:55):
trying to, you know, that was punishing these high poverty
black schools for not getting the same test scores as
these wealthy white schools, but not providing them the resources
that could allow them to actually, you know, compete academically.
So I was spending all of my time writing about
(28:16):
school on equality, and I just was constantly being confronted
with people who were working on behalf of these poor
black schools and were trying to tackle school inequality and
who were lambasting, you know, school segregation. And then you
I'd asked, well, you know, where do you send your
children to school?
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And not one of.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Them sent their kids to the types of schools that
they said they were fighting for. And I just remember,
and I didn't have any children at that time, and
I just remember being so struck by what felt like
a grave hypocrisy to me that you are arguing on
behalf of children that you're afraid to put your own
(28:59):
kids in school with. So I kind of made up
my mind back then that when and if I had
my own child, I was not going to make a
similar decision that I was going to try to live
my values now. Of course, as I as I have
said since then it's easy to have values when you
don't have to live them. So, you know, by the
(29:22):
time we have our own child. We moved to New
York City when when Naja was one year old, and uh,
as soon as we moved there, every middle class parent,
black or white, who had a child would say, oh, well,
you know, where are you going to send your child
to school? You have to you have to figure this out. No,
we don't send our kids to the local public schools.
(29:44):
And I was like, my child is one year old.
I'm not I'm not even thinking about that. And that's
when I understood it was going to be a test
of what what were we going to do. So when
our child got school a, I talked with Faraji and
I just said, we have to send her to the
(30:06):
type of schools that I write about. And in the
piece where I kind of document our educational choice for
my daughter, that's actually the cover of it.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Right there.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
She was on the cover of the New York Times
magazine I talk about, you know, Frigie and I argued
about it, and I understood his concerns. I had the
same ones. I understood that there's nothing wrong with black schools,
you know, inherently, but black schools just don't get the
same resources. And that's always been why Black Americans saw integration.
(30:43):
It wasn't just because they just wanted to have you know,
they were dying to have their kids sit next to
a white student, but there was an understanding that that
was the only way we've ever had kind of scalable equality.
So I talked to Frogie about it, and he felt,
you know, our parents really worked hard to not put
(31:03):
us in that educational environment. So why would we when
we have even more resources than our own parents put
our children in educate our child in an educational environment
that we don't have to.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Nicole, you talked about the challenge of that moment where
you got to live your values with your child like
that had to be one of the most emotionally challenging questions,
and so Fraugia, I'm so curious to hear your take
on this also, But if I could add one part,
I think it's so important for our listeners to understand Fraudian.
(31:37):
Thus I'm mistaken. I think that you have not only
chosen to send your child into the public school system,
but you are changing the system. You're now a member
of the New York City's Community Education Council.
Speaker 8 (31:46):
New York school system is the most segregated in the
country according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, So we
are functioning within de fact those segregating schools. So with
that that has been the foundation in terms of what
we are trying to do is fixed. I myself don't
(32:08):
think that our school system needs to be fixed. I
think it needs to be transformed, and we have yet
to begun to reckon with the historical fact of how
segregated our schools have been. In terms of me even
disagreeing with where to see my daughter, I thought that
the conversation was really important because these are conversations that
need to be had, and it was important that people
(32:30):
see the conversation that Nicole and I were having. And
it wasn't until we organically took the process of actually
going into the schools and having real conversations with principals, teachers,
and other staff members within the schools to really organically
have that conversation. Where it really hit me in the
(32:51):
gut was when I was actually looking in the faces
of some of these kids that looked like me. You know,
we have to understand it. Even if you are black
parents and you're part of the apple or the middle class,
you know, think about what you are saying in terms
of what if the school is not good for your child,
then it shouldn't be good for any of the children
that you are that's also attendee.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I mean one Fragi went from a skeptic to you know,
full on completely involved in the schools, such an advocate
for exactly those type of schools. But I think it's
important to say that one. I think everyone likes to
believe that they will be advocates for communities that they're
(33:32):
not part of, but I just don't think it often
is true.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
I think you you never fight. It's hard for a
community that you don't belong to.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And for us, we didn't want to be separate. I
think it was really important. You know, my daughter lives
such a privileged life compared to anything either Frogie and
I grew up to I grew up with, but we
live in Best Die. She is comfortable around every type
(34:02):
of black person, and that is so important to me.
She doesn't think she's better than our neighbors who live
in the housing projects. She has been in classrooms for
almost an entire career with our neighbors of various economic statuses,
and that was really important to us that we did
not raise as black child who was uncomfortable around most
(34:23):
of our black folks, who would go home with me
to Waterloo, Iowa and fit right in. That was really critical.
And the other thing I think that we don't talk
enough about is segregation that our students, our community faces
now is a race based, but it is also a
class based. So we talk about how white parents don't
(34:46):
want to be in these schools, but middle class black
parents don't want to be in these schools either, And
we have also abandoned our communities. You know, a handful
of middle class parents cannot transform an entire system. Are
in the fight together with our community. And that mom
who's working at a fast food job does not have
(35:08):
the power that I do. When I go in a
school and I say something is wrong, as an investigative
reporter at the New York Times, they listen to me.
It doesn't mean that I care more about my child,
it doesn't mean I'm more invested than other parents, but
I have more power. And I just have strongly believed
that the one kind of unintended consequence of integration has
(35:31):
been the abandonment of our poor communities by the black
middle class, and Frougie and I have just decided, both
of educational choices that we've made and where we have
decided to call our home, that we didn't want to
be part of that, that some of us have to
stay in our communities in order to be able to
(35:53):
fight with our communities.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I think that's why it's so critically important too. One
of the things that Martin's father said just few months
before he was assassinated is that I fear that in
the rush for integration that we're running into a burning,
burning house. And it's also important to remember that his
very last campaign was Poor People's Campaign, and it was
(36:17):
about bringing together black, white, Native Latino all coming together, appellation,
looking at the intersection, although they didn't use that term
in the sixties, but looking at the connections between you know,
poverty and bringing everyone together. Absolutely, it's an incredibly important
conversation and one in which a lot of black.
Speaker 7 (36:39):
Families are having right now.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
But in December, your daughter had the chance to talk
with Vice President Kamala Harris at a Christmas event at
the residence, and this question is for both of you,
what did that moment mean to you? And of course
we would like to know what she.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Told her that moment. It was probably the probably one
of the most important moments.
Speaker 8 (37:05):
Of my daughter's life. And maybe she doesn't know it,
but I felt that that seed, that seed needed to
be planted, uh in terms of being able to look
a black woman in the eye, sitting in that seat,
even in the the atmosphere of defeat, and be able
to stand and talk to her people, and be able
(37:26):
to stand shake her hand and talk to her in
a way where there was no emotional uh, you know, disappointment.
It was more like here I am, I'm speaking to you.
She's speaking to her, She's seeing her in her highest moment.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (37:41):
And I felt that that that's what That's what it
meant to me, was for my daughter to see, uh,
a black woman, even in defeat, see her at her
highest moment, holding her head high, being able to address
her and still be able to celebrate in that moment
despite we're going through in our country.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
It was a really powerful moment for us all because,
as Frogie said, no matter what the result of that
election was, hers was a historic barrier breaking candidacy, and
she is and will remain the first woman vice president
(38:24):
of the United States.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
So and Howard alone, right.
Speaker 10 (38:29):
So, so yeah, in that moment, you know, I had
spoken with the Vice President about my daughter before we
had we had talked about not just interested in Howard
and my interest in Naja going to Howard, and so
she just asked, you know, she asked Naja about Howard.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
So I was like, yes, keep pushing her that way.
And she asked her what did she you know, what
did she want to do? Nija wants to be a doctor,
So Naja told her that, and she just told her,
you know, to study hard and work hard for her goals.
And I think, just as a black girl in Trump's America,
(39:10):
having that sort of affirmation in that moment was really critical.
And I feel like you all have, I'm sure, done
this with your own child. Just hearing when you were
saying and you talked to her about Africa and taught
her about the continent, uh, not just being Agana twice.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I feel like that's so important.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
And I feel like since she was a young girl,
we tried to build armor around her. We tried to,
you know, understand that We needed to shape her perception
of herself before she started going out into the world,
because the world was going to give her a completely
different perception of what a black girl was and could
(39:49):
and it should be. So we always tried to build
that in her before the world would try to tell
her something else. And so to have a black girl
be able to see this proud, strong, amazing black woman
in that position and have a moment with her, to me,
just affirmed in the biggest possible way everything that we
(40:11):
had tried to teach our daughter from her earliest days.
Speaker 6 (40:15):
I have one final question. I want to kind of
come full circle and go back to where we begin
the love story.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
What have you each.
Speaker 6 (40:25):
Learned is at the heart of a true partnership.
Speaker 8 (40:30):
As a man who is married to someone who is successful,
you know and come from I come from a very
conservative religious family, to where you know, the whole scripture
or the actual parable saying that the man is the
head and not the tale and all of those things.
You know, I've learned to shed a lot of those
(40:51):
ideas and understand that truly this is a partnership and
truly that the decisions you make in are connected to
that journey in your relationship and your family. And I'm
gonna tell you, if I stood in my own way,
we will not be where we are today. You will
not probably see the sixteen nineteen project if I have
been an individual that was an obstacle in the way
(41:15):
of my wife. And I will continue to elevate, and
I will continue to support the work that she's doing
is important work, and I will forever be grateful.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
Oh that was beautiful?
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Can I say as a husband, I just hope this
moment in the broadcast is when every husband says that
to other fellow husband exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Amen.
Speaker 6 (41:43):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So I think that you know, the biggest thing is
is compromise. It is forgiveness. It is a willingness to
admit when you're wrong. Like Frogie said, true partners, because
we really are what I'm I are most about.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
Froggie one. He's just a good person. He's just kind
and he's a good person.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I'm in the spotlight, but I could not do the
things that I do without a partner who's going to
be willing to be at home and make sure the
child gets to school, make sure Naja is fed, takes
her to her track, meets you know that is able
to be that completely supportive.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
This man is my biggest cheerleader.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I mean, there's never I have friends where their their
spouse and particularly you know, their husbands are I don't
want to say jealous of their success, but they feel
some type of way about it, and I've just never
had that. Every time somebody meets Froggie, I talked to
(42:51):
him later and they was like, man, he was bragging
about you, and I just I appreciate that so so much,
especially like he said, knowing you know, he's picked up
and moved across the country because I had opportunity. If
he hadn't agreed to come to New York, I wouldn't
have had the career that I had. And having a
(43:13):
spouse who support your dream and vision, sometimes even at
the cost of their own, it's just it is a
rare thing, and I'm very grateful for it.
Speaker 5 (43:25):
Cool and Foraji. Your story is beautiful. To listen to
just the two of you together, you make me want
to call my wife right now. But more than that,
you've shown us that the truth telling is not only
about reclaiming history, but when we talk about your own child,
it's about shaping the next generation and what we'll all inherit.
(43:48):
When you talk about the pushback that you receive from
the highest of powers. To judge our success sometimes by
how our enemies respond and live our values. It's easy
to preach it, but it's hard to live it.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
I also was particularly moved by just this notion of
I've always heard a wise person say to not be
moved by the praise that you receive, nor the criticism
you know to So the fact that you seem to
be so steady in that, I think is something that
I hope that our listeners take away with them. But
(44:25):
most importantly I keep coming back to is love. The
love that you all have first and foremost for each other.
This the story of love and partnership is truly beautiful.
The love that you have for your daughter, the love
that you have for our people. It really shows us
(44:49):
the importance of partnership and love that particularly that highest
form of love, that is the remembrance of the fact
that we're all interconnected. And once we stay and to
move forward in that power, that's when we really will
see more and more change in our households and our
nations and our world. So thank you for sharing that
(45:10):
part of yourselves with us.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us
on at my Legacy Movement on social media and YouTube.
New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday.
At its core, this podcast honors doctor King's vision of
the beloved community and the power of connection. A Legacy
(45:35):
Plus Studio production distributed by iHeartMedia creator and executive producer
Suzanne Hayward come executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
I wanted to do something really big and substantial to
force it a reckoning.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
She's the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who set the country
on fire with a project that dared to reframe history.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You know that this one project was considered so dangerous
that had to create an entire build or try to
rescue American history from this single work of journalism.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Nicole Hannah Jones created the groundbreaking New York Times Magazine
sixteen nineteen project and stood her ground when those in
power tried to tear it down.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Wow, I'm sitting here with chills throughout my body.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
It's easy to have values that you don't have to
live them.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Join hosts Martin Luther King the Third, Andrea Waters, King,
Mark Kilberger, and Craig Kilberger for an uncompromising conversation about hope,
democracy and raising the next generation to know their work.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I just remember going fifteen years of my life healing
in a quit in inferior as a black girl.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
What I know for fact because my daughter has never.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Felt welcome to my legacy. Today's guest, Nicole Hannah Jones,
is one of the most influential journalists of our time,
and it's changed how this country tells its history. Nicole,
we are so honored to have you with us here today,
and of course, in the true fashion of my legacy,
(01:27):
we always meet the person who knows you best. Would
you mind introducing us to your plus one today?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. Nice to
meet you all. And my plus one is my husband,
Frigi Hannah Jones, and we have been married for how
long twenty three years?
Speaker 5 (01:50):
So thrilled to have you with us here today and
can't wait to get to know both of you better.
But Nicole, if we could start with you, we'd love
to understand this incredible journey that you've had on him,
and to take us a little bit back to the origin,
because there's got to be a deep, rich part of
this origin story of why he became so passionate, Maybe
a memory from your childhood or your student days that
(02:12):
set you on this incredible life trajectory.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I grew up in a house of avid readers. My
mom was always very involved in social justice, and so
I always had a strong sense of writing and wrong,
of fairness and of wanting to root for the underdog.
When I was eleven years old, I read the newspaper
every day with my dad. When I was eleven years old,
(02:36):
I wrote my first letter to the editor to our
local paper. It was about Jesse Jackson's historic run to
become the first black president in nineteen eighty eight, and
he didn't do very well. I'm from Iowa and so
we had the first in the nation primary and he
didn't do very well. And I felt he was a
(02:57):
great candidate, and one of the reasons he didn't do
well was because he was a black man. So at
eleven years old, I wrote a letter to the editor
about that, and every day I would go home and
look at the paper and open to the opinion section,
and then one day they printed my letter, and I
just remember, even as a middle school student, feeling so
(03:18):
empowered by seeing my name in print and knowing that
I could see something in the world that I didn't
think was fair, and I could write about it and
I could make people pay attention to it. So I
think that's when I started to think about maybe writing
or journalism as something I might want to pursue. Of course,
I didn't know any journalists back then, and I wasn't
sure what I might want to do. But I think
(03:39):
that's where the first kind of kernel of an idea
that this might be a career for me began.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
I love it from the early days of activism.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
Farajie, you know we all love a good love story.
Can you share how you first met Nicole?
Speaker 7 (03:57):
Did you see?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I wish the viewers could see how you When Martin
asked that question, You're you just lit up.
Speaker 8 (04:05):
So I will say both of us met actually online, uh,
sometime in nineteen ninety nine on a program called AOL
instant Messenger that no longer exists, that no longer exists. Well, basically,
it was my name that pretty much attracted the inquiry
(04:26):
of Nicole. And so she popped up on my screen
one day, and of course we're all, you know, these
are the early days of the internet. And she pops
up on my screen and she says hello, and I'm like,
who is this? And the conversation started with you know,
I love your name. Then, of course, at the time
(04:47):
I was living in Atlanta, Uh, And of course our
conversation progressed more into what we like to do, what
we see ourselves doing, those types of things.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (04:57):
And then of course the phone call. We had a
phone call, and of course I loved the sound of
her voice, and she loved mine, and I hope she
still loves mama.
Speaker 7 (05:07):
I was gonna ask you, do you still love the
sound of it.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
I was immediately very attracted to Nicole, and so at
the time she said, I love Atlanta, I'm moving there.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
She moved to Atlanta. She actually arrived.
Speaker 8 (05:21):
We met each other November first, nineteen ninety nine, and
I was going to pick her up. And I think
the agreement we had was she doesn't like what she sees,
she will walk back into her apartment. If I don't
like what I see, I'll drive away. And it was
raining that day.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Wait wait, wait, so take So this is nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
There's no social media. There's no way for you to
see someone.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
So I think I like snuck into work late at
night and scanned used my office scanner and I scanned
a photo of myself and then he mailed in the
mailto kissed out. But I was always so scared, Like
you know, photos don't actually represent what the person really
looks like sometimes, so that's why I was like, Okay,
(06:05):
when when it's time for us to meet, I'm going
to stand outside and you just drive by or slow
and if.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
We don't you look at me, I'll look at you.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And if we don't like how each other looks, we'll
just I'll go back in the house, or you keep driving,
and no harm, no foul. So that it was actually
it was downpouring rain that was standing outside with the umbrella.
He drove by slowly, and I guess we both like
what we saw.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
What I got in the.
Speaker 8 (06:30):
Car, drove buying my key, my key, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
Mark, you see Martin's face. He's nervous already.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
There may or may not have been a time when
he had talked to someone on the phone and they
were driving past, but he kept he kept driving.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
So you understand my strategy.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
Now that millions of people are listening, What do you
have to say about this?
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Sometimes you had to keep driving, and I'm so glad
I did.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Oh good landed you landed on a table.
Speaker 7 (07:08):
Nicole.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
You are a young journalist when the two of you
all met, And now we'll fast forward fifteen years and
you create this truly truly incredible ground shifting issue of
The New York Times magazine, the sixteen nineteen project And
for those that don't know, the project reframed American history
by centering the legacy of slavery and the contributions of
(07:33):
black Americans into the narrative of the country. So I
am so curious as how did the idea take shape
and what did it take to bring this vision that
you had to life.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
So I.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Have been obsessed with the year sixteen nineteen since I
was fifteen years old. So I had been busted into
white schools starting in the second grade, and so I
was part of a small black population at my high
school that was busted as part of a school desegregation program.
And so they offered this one semester Black studies course
(08:11):
with a teacher named mister Ray Dow, the only black
men I ever had as an educator, and it transformed
my life. Suddenly I was exposed to all of these
books written by black people, all of these books about
black history. I didn't really realize there was so much
(08:33):
history that could be taught.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
I mean, of course.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I knew about your father, mister King, but as you
also know, maybe five black people was I ever really
taught about during Black History Month? And so I take
this course, and all of a sudden I realized that
the history that we had been taught was not even
close to all of the history that could be taught,
(08:58):
and that people had really intentionally decided that they were
going to erase most of the contributions of black people,
not just in America but in the world. And so
would ask mister Dill to give me books to read
on my own, and one of the books he gave
me was Laurn Bennis Before the Mayflower.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
So that was like a really transformative moment.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
For me, as a fifteen year old girl, to realize
that the history of black people in this land went
back even before the Pilgrims and the Mayflower, and understanding
that every American child learns about the Mayflower, but no
one thought it was important to teach us about another
ship that arrived a year earlier, called the White Lion.
So Frodi will tell you, as long as he's known me,
(09:45):
I've always talked about sixteen nineteen, and I used to
kind of jokingly say my journalism was getting longer and
longer and longer everything I wrote because I kept trying
to go further and further back in the past until
we got to the start of it, which was sixteen nineteen.
So as the four hundredth anniversary of that date was
approaching in late twenty eighteen. I just was thinking, this
(10:10):
most momentous date, that so many Americans still didn't know
the anniversary was coming up. And I'm at the New
York Times. I'm not a little girl in Waterloo, Iowa anymore.
I have the greatest journalism platform in the world. So
I wanted to do something really big and substantial to
force it a reckoning with that date and that the
(10:32):
institution of slavery is older than the country itself here,
and that there's few institutions in what would become the
United States that pre date us deciding to engage in
African slavery. So that's when I came up with the
idea to pitch a project that would take over the
entire issue of the New York Times magazine. And I
(10:56):
really didn't want it to be about the past, because
the thing that I believe strongly is that past and
our unwillingness to grapple with it honestly has shaped this
country in so many profound ways that we don't acknowledge.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
So I didn't want to talk just about the things
that we know that slavery shaped.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I wanted to talk about all of these areas of
American life that have been shaped by this legacy that
we don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
So that was really the idea.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
But it is something in some way that I have
been working towards my entire adult life. That's why I
majored in history and African American studies in college. It's
why I wanted to be a journalist who didn't just
write about the present, but who always wove history into
all of my works.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Wow, I'm sitting here with particularly as a black woman,
with chills throughout my body, and it's so amazing because
over these leading up to this interview, every woman that
I've told, every single black lady that I have said,
guess who we're having on the show, they all unequivocally
(12:07):
fangirled out. I just hope that you know and understand
what you are to our community and how loved you
are and on behalf of all of us. And we
have a seventeen year old girl, you all have a
fifteen year old. A sincere heartfelt from my belly.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Thank you, oh, thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I remember when the first issue came out and people
were lining up in New York city around the corner
on to get their hands on this magazine, like to
see that that hunger and that desire, people standing in
line for that, and it was just truly amazing. But
I know that you've said before that you wrote this
(12:55):
for your people, for your daughter, and for yourself, and
so as a mother, what were you hoping to give
your daughter through this work.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
I just remember.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Going fifteen years of my life feeling inadequate and inferior
as a black girl, feeling somehow that our history was shameful,
that the reason that they didn't include us in the
literature that we were being taught in the museums that
we went to, in the history books was because we
(13:32):
hadn't done anything, because surely if we had, if we
had contributed to society, we would be learning about that
it would be reflected. And so I just remember this
constant searching for identity and for some worth, and not
ever being a shame to be black, but just feeling
(13:55):
this kind of emptiness and not understanding, you know, how
our people were somehow different from every other people in
the world, that we hadn't contributed great things.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
And so.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
What I know for a fact is my daughter has
never felt that for a day, and that having this project,
and you know the children's book Born on the Water,
which I try to help black children understand, we too
have an origin story and it doesn't begin in a
slave ship. I dedicated that book to my daughter because
(14:28):
I just wanted her to never have to go up
with that sense of inadequacy, that searching for her worth.
And I know the beauty of what my husband and
I have been able to provide for her, and like
the legacy of this book is, she knows that. In
(14:50):
some ways, I think we do this as parents all
the time. Is what we struggled with, what we felt
was missing. We try to make sure that our children
don't experience is that and my child never has.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
What we did as parents.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
As our daughter was growing up, as we were intentional
before she got to school, before she was in daycare,
to teach her about Africa, right, to teach her the
story of Africa, to teach her the countries, to teach
her all of just the history so that when because
we knew obviously that she would hear about slavery, and
we were intentional that that wasn't her initial understanding of
(15:31):
our history of black people not that we have anything
to be embarrassed about for slavery, but for her to understand.
And so I remember once when she went to the
Civil and Human Rights Museum here on a school trip
in kindergarten, and they if you go up to the museum,
at the top level is a room of Africa. And
so Yolanda stood in the middle of the room and
told all of her classmates, and she stretches her hands out,
(15:54):
we all African Americans because civilization started in Africa.
Speaker 7 (15:59):
So she was looking at her white friends. It's like,
you're African too.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
Yes, we're building something real here, one episode at a time.
If you want to be part of it, to subscribe,
it's free, it matters, and we're just getting started.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Now back to my legacy, Nicole.
Speaker 9 (16:19):
So much of what you do is absolutely remarkable. But
perhaps one of the most interesting statistics to share with
our audience is by the time you conceptualized and pitched
the A sixteen nineteen project, the time it was published
was only seven months, if I'm correct, which is absolutely remarkable. Froggie,
this is a question for you. What was it like
(16:41):
being beside your partner, your best friend during that journey
seeing her come up with this concept birth, the concept
seeing the intensity of the emotions and seeing the final product.
What was that journey like for her? But what was
that journey like for you?
Speaker 8 (16:53):
Well, you just used a key word, and that was birthing.
That's what this was like. It was like someone who
is conceived our second child in so many different ways,
you know, and going through all of the emotions of
a woman who is pregnant with your child. I had
(17:16):
no idea that it was going to be big as
it was. But generally when the cold goes through her
process and it feels like it's a burden on her,
and sometimes you know, you're catching all the you're catching
how moody she is. She doesn't feel like certain things,
and she feels you know, you know, pretty much nitpicking
and things at the around the house. But I mean,
(17:38):
you know, in your heart it was like, oh, this
is gonna be good, Like this is home cooking right here.
I knew every time she's stressing over her projects, I
know how impactful it's going to be for the betterment
of our people. And so you learn to be much
more tolerant because you understand this is important work and
it's for the betterment of our people and our community.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
I love because no other podcast other than having someone
with their partner, we get the honesty and the depth
and the richness of that conversation. I love it, Nicole.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Obviously, there was incredible love for this project, but also
fierce political pushback.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Can you take us.
Speaker 6 (18:19):
Into that moment and what it meant to be celebrated
and also tragically attacked at the same time.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I knew when the project published there would be kind
of a typical conservative outrage. You know, we were trying
to unsettle this established narrative of the United States. We
you know, we're trying to be provocative saying what if
our real origin is not seventeen seventy six with these
(18:49):
ideas of liberty, but sixteen nineteen with the practice of slavery.
So I expected, you know, I think when it first
came out, Knu Gingrid, you know, called a trash and
things like that, and and that, you know, I was
I'm I was used to that. But then uh, some
months in it started to change, and no one was
(19:11):
more shocked than me that this would be something that
the President of the United States, Donald Trump, would spend
all this time disparaging that you would see UH, sitting
senators introduce a bill against the project called the Saving
American History Act, which which actually I take great pride
in that. So you know that this one project was
(19:34):
considered so dangerous that you you had to create an
entire bill to try to rescue American history from this
single work of journalism. So I I I quickly realized
that this was much more powerful than you know, even
I could have hoped that you can measure the impact
(19:58):
by the opposition, and and.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
That I actually have amazing enemies.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Because if these folks are mad at at my work,
then then I've done the right thing. And I won't say,
you know, it's five years out now, so I have
gone through some some growth periods.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Uh. I didn't always respond well to it.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I this this was the most important project of my life.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
I cared deeply about it.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I was took so much care, and to see people
so flippantly attack it, I really felt I had to
be out there defending it at all times. And I
realized now that that wasn't necessary. That uh, the project
stood on its own.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I'm I'm a print reporter. I'm not I'm not a
TV reporter. I never expected people to know who I was,
or know my name, or to become some sort of symbol.
And and when you do that at and all of
a sudden, you become this symbol bulk to people who
love you, but also to people who revalue And one
of the people who reviles you is is the President
(21:11):
of the United States, who also was stoking violence consistently.
Then that requires an adjustment that it took me a
while to realize. You know, there was, like I call it,
like there was some cognitive cognitive dissonance because in my mind,
I'm still like Nicole Hannah Jones that only a few
(21:32):
people know if you're real nerdy and you care about
school segregation, which is what I was mostly writing about before.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
But now, all of a sudden, I was this symbolic person.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
That people were looking at and scrutinizing everything I tweeted,
everything I might say somewhere, And that can be a
really challenging transition to make.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
But looking back on it, I just feel, you know,
tremend pride. Like if Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Was so concerned about my work that he created an
entire presidential commission against it, I was.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Doing the right thing.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
You know, they began to pass these divisive concept laws
across the state. You know, in Georgia, you're not supposed
to teach sixteen nineteen. There were certain school boards Cop County,
other school boards that passed policy that you can't teach
the sixty nineteen project. And then they followed it with
(22:33):
those anti critical race theory laws, and then the divisive
concept laws, and now the attack on DEI I contributed
to this cultural reckoning that happened in twenty twenty, and
maybe I contributed to this racial reckoning that we're having
right now in the opposite direction.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
And I hope that you are just that you were
saying that, because let me just be clear that onus
is not on you. The awakening or reckoning that we're
going through in this country.
Speaker 7 (23:04):
Which were.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Its in process, is not on you. And learning about
our history is about it's not about collective guilt. It's
about collective responsibility.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Absolutely, And let me just be clear.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I do think they would like to blame us for
how they have responded to us trying to force a
reckoning with the reality of our country. And that's yeah,
that's their problem, that's not ours. And I believe strongly
that if they believe that the narrative and the truth
(23:42):
was on their side, they would just tell the truth.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
Rogie, I have a question for you as well, and
it's probably challenging to quantify, but what was the most
surprising outcome.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
I was particularly surprised at some of our public schools
that were, uh, you know, going to their school boards
and really looking at their historical curriculum, their history curriculum
and saying, look, you know, we need to we need
to re examine how we're teaching our kids history, particularly kids,
(24:18):
not just kids of color, but how history is being
taught to some of our affluent and white white kids.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
And so you had.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
School systems that really were looking to change their curriculum,
and of course that went with a lot of resistance
the community churches. I remember when the magazine came out,
it was like they did I think a brunch at Sylvia's.
(24:48):
It was just a women coming together, you know, talking
about the project. I mean, I never seen anything like it.
You're looking at an institution that is literally dying, you know,
the print industry is dying, and you saw don't say that,
but you've seen for the first time people like literally
(25:09):
going out buying a newspaper and reading it. You know,
you saw all of these people that were involved in
terms of trying to make sure that they can get
this their hands on the print copy itself, and it's
not just the copy, the whole newspaper, and they were
being sold out everywhere. I was extremely impressed by that
(25:29):
the most, And how how well the community has been
able to build a fence around this work and we're
still talking about it five five years later, and they're
still trying to diminish the work five years later, and
so I do think that history is definitely on our side,
and it will and it will prevail.
Speaker 9 (25:51):
If you're looking for stories that move you, insights that
shift you, in conversations that stay deeply within you. Do
us a favor, and do yourself a favor and hit
the subscribe button right now. Is the best way to
support this podcast and support your journey. New episodes drop
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Speaker 3 (26:10):
Now, back to my legacy, both of my parents and
my grandparents, but certainly you know they attended segregated schools,
so you know, being born in nineteen seventy four, I'm
the first generation. I was the first generation of our
family to attend integrated schools.
Speaker 7 (26:28):
So when you walk around and you.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Look and see the history, wasn't that long ago Martin
integrated one of the elementary schools here in Atlanta. But
another issue that sparked that you helped spark a national
conversation about was education and segregated schools.
Speaker 7 (26:50):
And then you've written.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Very powerfully about your choice to send your daughter to
a majority black public school, a Title I school, instead
of a private school. And I'm sure I know that
both of you all thought long and hard about that decision.
So can you please let us know what was behind
that decision and how did you hope it would reframe
(27:12):
the conversation for parents.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
My very first job as a journalist was covering the
Durham Public Schools in Durham, North Carolina. And Durham was
a majority black city but still had a substantial white
population and had very segregated schools.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
And I just that I didn't want to be an
education reporter.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
That was just the first job I got, but became
very interested in educational inequality, and I started covering that
right during No Child Left Behind. So I was seeing
really the disastrous impacts of a federal policy that was
(27:55):
trying to, you know, that was punishing these high poverty
black schools for not getting the same test scores as
these wealthy white schools, but not providing them the resources
that could allow them to actually, you know, compete academically.
So I was spending all of my time writing about
(28:16):
school on equality, and I just was constantly being confronted
with people who were working on behalf of these poor
black schools and were trying to tackle school inequality and
who were lambasting, you know, school segregation. And then you
I'd asked, well, you know, where do you send your
children to school?
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And not one of.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Them sent their kids to the types of schools that
they said they were fighting for. And I just remember,
and I didn't have any children at that time, and
I just remember being so struck by what felt like
a grave hypocrisy to me that you are arguing on
behalf of children that you're afraid to put your own
(28:59):
kids in school with. So I kind of made up
my mind back then that when and if I had
my own child, I was not going to make a
similar decision that I was going to try to live
my values now. Of course, as I as I have
said since then it's easy to have values when you
don't have to live them. So, you know, by the
(29:22):
time we have our own child. We moved to New
York City when when Naja was one year old, and uh,
as soon as we moved there, every middle class parent,
black or white, who had a child would say, oh, well,
you know, where are you going to send your child
to school? You have to you have to figure this out. No,
we don't send our kids to the local public schools.
(29:44):
And I was like, my child is one year old.
I'm not I'm not even thinking about that. And that's
when I understood it was going to be a test
of what what were we going to do. So when
our child got school a, I talked with Faraji and
I just said, we have to send her to the
(30:06):
type of schools that I write about. And in the
piece where I kind of document our educational choice for
my daughter, that's actually the cover of it.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Right there.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
She was on the cover of the New York Times
magazine I talk about, you know, Frigie and I argued
about it, and I understood his concerns. I had the
same ones. I understood that there's nothing wrong with black schools,
you know, inherently, but black schools just don't get the
same resources. And that's always been why Black Americans saw integration.
(30:43):
It wasn't just because they just wanted to have you know,
they were dying to have their kids sit next to
a white student, but there was an understanding that that
was the only way we've ever had kind of scalable equality.
So I talked to Frogie about it, and he felt,
you know, our parents really worked hard to not put
(31:03):
us in that educational environment. So why would we when
we have even more resources than our own parents put
our children in educate our child in an educational environment
that we don't have to.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Nicole, you talked about the challenge of that moment where
you got to live your values with your child like
that had to be one of the most emotionally challenging questions,
and so Fraugia, I'm so curious to hear your take
on this also, But if I could add one part,
I think it's so important for our listeners to understand Fraudian.
(31:37):
Thus I'm mistaken. I think that you have not only
chosen to send your child into the public school system,
but you are changing the system. You're now a member
of the New York City's Community Education Council.
Speaker 8 (31:46):
New York school system is the most segregated in the
country according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, So we
are functioning within de fact those segregating schools. So with
that that has been the foundation in terms of what
we are trying to do is fixed. I myself don't
(32:08):
think that our school system needs to be fixed. I
think it needs to be transformed, and we have yet
to begun to reckon with the historical fact of how
segregated our schools have been. In terms of me even
disagreeing with where to see my daughter, I thought that
the conversation was really important because these are conversations that
need to be had, and it was important that people
(32:30):
see the conversation that Nicole and I were having. And
it wasn't until we organically took the process of actually
going into the schools and having real conversations with principals, teachers,
and other staff members within the schools to really organically
have that conversation. Where it really hit me in the
(32:51):
gut was when I was actually looking in the faces
of some of these kids that looked like me. You know,
we have to understand it. Even if you are black
parents and you're part of the apple or the middle class,
you know, think about what you are saying in terms
of what if the school is not good for your child,
then it shouldn't be good for any of the children
that you are that's also attendee.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I mean one Fragi went from a skeptic to you know,
full on completely involved in the schools, such an advocate
for exactly those type of schools. But I think it's
important to say that one. I think everyone likes to
believe that they will be advocates for communities that they're
(33:32):
not part of, but I just don't think it often
is true.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
I think you you never fight. It's hard for a
community that you don't belong to.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And for us, we didn't want to be separate. I
think it was really important. You know, my daughter lives
such a privileged life compared to anything either Frogie and
I grew up to I grew up with, but we
live in Best Die. She is comfortable around every type
(34:02):
of black person, and that is so important to me.
She doesn't think she's better than our neighbors who live
in the housing projects. She has been in classrooms for
almost an entire career with our neighbors of various economic statuses,
and that was really important to us that we did
not raise as black child who was uncomfortable around most
(34:23):
of our black folks, who would go home with me
to Waterloo, Iowa and fit right in. That was really critical.
And the other thing I think that we don't talk
enough about is segregation that our students, our community faces
now is a race based, but it is also a
class based. So we talk about how white parents don't
(34:46):
want to be in these schools, but middle class black
parents don't want to be in these schools either, And
we have also abandoned our communities. You know, a handful
of middle class parents cannot transform an entire system. Are
in the fight together with our community. And that mom
who's working at a fast food job does not have
(35:08):
the power that I do. When I go in a
school and I say something is wrong, as an investigative
reporter at the New York Times, they listen to me.
It doesn't mean that I care more about my child,
it doesn't mean I'm more invested than other parents, but
I have more power. And I just have strongly believed
that the one kind of unintended consequence of integration has
(35:31):
been the abandonment of our poor communities by the black
middle class, and Frougie and I have just decided, both
of educational choices that we've made and where we have
decided to call our home, that we didn't want to
be part of that, that some of us have to
stay in our communities in order to be able to
(35:53):
fight with our communities.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I think that's why it's so critically important too. One
of the things that Martin's father said just few months
before he was assassinated is that I fear that in
the rush for integration that we're running into a burning,
burning house. And it's also important to remember that his
very last campaign was Poor People's Campaign, and it was
(36:17):
about bringing together black, white, Native Latino all coming together, appellation,
looking at the intersection, although they didn't use that term
in the sixties, but looking at the connections between you know,
poverty and bringing everyone together. Absolutely, it's an incredibly important
conversation and one in which a lot of black.
Speaker 7 (36:39):
Families are having right now.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
But in December, your daughter had the chance to talk
with Vice President Kamala Harris at a Christmas event at
the residence, and this question is for both of you,
what did that moment mean to you? And of course
we would like to know what she.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Told her that moment. It was probably the probably one
of the most important moments.
Speaker 8 (37:05):
Of my daughter's life. And maybe she doesn't know it,
but I felt that that seed, that seed needed to
be planted, uh in terms of being able to look
a black woman in the eye, sitting in that seat,
even in the the atmosphere of defeat, and be able
to stand and talk to her people, and be able
(37:26):
to stand shake her hand and talk to her in
a way where there was no emotional uh, you know, disappointment.
It was more like here I am, I'm speaking to you.
She's speaking to her, She's seeing her in her highest moment.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (37:41):
And I felt that that that's what That's what it
meant to me, was for my daughter to see, uh,
a black woman, even in defeat, see her at her
highest moment, holding her head high, being able to address
her and still be able to celebrate in that moment
despite we're going through in our country.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
It was a really powerful moment for us all because,
as Frogie said, no matter what the result of that
election was, hers was a historic barrier breaking candidacy, and
she is and will remain the first woman vice president
(38:24):
of the United States.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
So and Howard alone, right.
Speaker 10 (38:29):
So, so yeah, in that moment, you know, I had
spoken with the Vice President about my daughter before we
had we had talked about not just interested in Howard
and my interest in Naja going to Howard, and so
she just asked, you know, she asked Naja about Howard.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
So I was like, yes, keep pushing her that way.
And she asked her what did she you know, what
did she want to do? Nija wants to be a doctor,
So Naja told her that, and she just told her,
you know, to study hard and work hard for her goals.
And I think, just as a black girl in Trump's America,
(39:10):
having that sort of affirmation in that moment was really critical.
And I feel like you all have, I'm sure, done
this with your own child. Just hearing when you were
saying and you talked to her about Africa and taught
her about the continent, uh, not just being Agana twice.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I feel like that's so important.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
And I feel like since she was a young girl,
we tried to build armor around her. We tried to,
you know, understand that We needed to shape her perception
of herself before she started going out into the world,
because the world was going to give her a completely
different perception of what a black girl was and could
(39:49):
and it should be. So we always tried to build
that in her before the world would try to tell
her something else. And so to have a black girl
be able to see this proud, strong, amazing black woman
in that position and have a moment with her, to me,
just affirmed in the biggest possible way everything that we
(40:11):
had tried to teach our daughter from her earliest days.
Speaker 6 (40:15):
I have one final question. I want to kind of
come full circle and go back to where we begin
the love story.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
What have you each.
Speaker 6 (40:25):
Learned is at the heart of a true partnership.
Speaker 8 (40:30):
As a man who is married to someone who is successful,
you know and come from I come from a very
conservative religious family, to where you know, the whole scripture
or the actual parable saying that the man is the
head and not the tale and all of those things.
You know, I've learned to shed a lot of those
(40:51):
ideas and understand that truly this is a partnership and
truly that the decisions you make in are connected to
that journey in your relationship and your family. And I'm
gonna tell you, if I stood in my own way,
we will not be where we are today. You will
not probably see the sixteen nineteen project if I have
been an individual that was an obstacle in the way
(41:15):
of my wife. And I will continue to elevate, and
I will continue to support the work that she's doing
is important work, and I will forever be grateful.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
Oh that was beautiful?
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Can I say as a husband, I just hope this
moment in the broadcast is when every husband says that
to other fellow husband exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Amen.
Speaker 6 (41:43):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So I think that you know, the biggest thing is
is compromise. It is forgiveness. It is a willingness to
admit when you're wrong. Like Frogie said, true partners, because
we really are what I'm I are most about.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
Froggie one. He's just a good person. He's just kind
and he's a good person.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I'm in the spotlight, but I could not do the
things that I do without a partner who's going to
be willing to be at home and make sure the
child gets to school, make sure Naja is fed, takes
her to her track, meets you know that is able
to be that completely supportive.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
This man is my biggest cheerleader.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I mean, there's never I have friends where their their
spouse and particularly you know, their husbands are I don't
want to say jealous of their success, but they feel
some type of way about it, and I've just never
had that. Every time somebody meets Froggie, I talked to
(42:51):
him later and they was like, man, he was bragging
about you, and I just I appreciate that so so much,
especially like he said, knowing you know, he's picked up
and moved across the country because I had opportunity. If
he hadn't agreed to come to New York, I wouldn't
have had the career that I had. And having a
(43:13):
spouse who support your dream and vision, sometimes even at
the cost of their own, it's just it is a
rare thing, and I'm very grateful for it.
Speaker 5 (43:25):
Cool and Foraji. Your story is beautiful. To listen to
just the two of you together, you make me want
to call my wife right now. But more than that,
you've shown us that the truth telling is not only
about reclaiming history, but when we talk about your own child,
it's about shaping the next generation and what we'll all inherit.
(43:48):
When you talk about the pushback that you receive from
the highest of powers. To judge our success sometimes by
how our enemies respond and live our values. It's easy
to preach it, but it's hard to live it.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
I also was particularly moved by just this notion of
I've always heard a wise person say to not be
moved by the praise that you receive, nor the criticism
you know to So the fact that you seem to
be so steady in that, I think is something that
I hope that our listeners take away with them. But
(44:25):
most importantly I keep coming back to is love. The
love that you all have first and foremost for each other.
This the story of love and partnership is truly beautiful.
The love that you have for your daughter, the love
that you have for our people. It really shows us
(44:49):
the importance of partnership and love that particularly that highest
form of love, that is the remembrance of the fact
that we're all interconnected. And once we stay and to
move forward in that power, that's when we really will
see more and more change in our households and our
nations and our world. So thank you for sharing that
(45:10):
part of yourselves with us.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us
on at my Legacy Movement on social media and YouTube.
New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday.
At its core, this podcast honors doctor King's vision of
the beloved community and the power of connection. A Legacy
(45:35):
Plus Studio production distributed by iHeartMedia creator and executive producer
Suzanne Hayward come executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger
Martin Luther King III
Arndrea Waters King
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