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The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story Virtual Book Launch
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the English colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story is a dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking and award-winning work of journalism: The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project” issue. This issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative.
Join One World and Pulitzer Prize-winner Nikole Hannah-Jones on Tuesday, November 16 at 8:00 p.m. ET for The 1619 Project’s Virtual Book Launch, presented in partnership with The New York Times and The Apollo Theater.
Hannah-Jones will be joined by Ibram X. Kendi for a discussion about The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, moderated by journalist Soledad O’Brien. Later in the program, to celebrate the simultaneous publication of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, a picture book adaption for young readers, Hannah-Jones will join co-author Renée Watson and illustrator Nikkolas Smith for a conversation moderated by author Derrick Barnes. The event will also feature an archival photo presentation by Kimberly Annece Henderson and a poetry reading by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.
Attendees will hear directly from Nikole Hannah-Jones about the process of putting this revolutionary project together, the impact that this work has had over the past few years, and why we cannot continue to gloss over the truths of our nation’s founding and construction.
Your ticket includes admission to this exclusive event and a hardcover copy of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story ($38 retail price), not including taxes and shipping.
About the contributors:
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine, and creator of the landmark 1619 Project. In 2017, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, known as the Genius Grant, for her work on educational inequality. She has also won a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, three National Magazine Awards, and the 2018 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from Columbia University. In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization geared toward increasing the number of investigative reporters of color. Hannah-Jones is the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she has founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy. In 2021, she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. His book Stamped from the Beginning won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and both his book How to Be an Antiracist and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, which he coedited, are national bestsellers.
Soledad O’Brien is an award-winning documentarian, journalist, speaker, author, and philanthropist, who founded Soledad O’Brien Productions, a multi-platform media production company dedicated to telling empowering and authentic stories on a range of social issues. She anchors and produces the Hearst TV political magazine program "Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien" and is a correspondent for HBO Real Sports. She is also host of the Quake Media podcast “Very Opinionated with Soledad O’Brien.” She has anchored shows on CNN, MSNBC, and NBC, and reported for Fox, A&E, Oxygen, Nat Geo, the PBS NewsHour, WebMD, and Al Jazeera America, among others. O’Brien’s work has been recognized with three Emmy awards, twice with the George Foster Peabody Award, three times with the Gracie Award, which honors women in media, twice with Cine Awards for her work in documentary films and also with an Alfred I. DuPont Award. With her husband, she is founder of the PowHERful Foundation that helps young women get to and through college.
Renée Watson is a New York Times bestselling author. Her young adult novel, Piecing Me Together (Bloomsbury, 2017) received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books for young readers include Harlem's Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Ways to Make Sunshine, which received the SCBWI Golden Kite Award. She has given readings and lectures at many renown places including the United Nations, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Embassy in Japan and New Zealand. Renée is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets’ Education Advisory Council. Renée grew up in Portland, Oregon, and splits her time between Portland and New York City. To learn more about Renée’s work, visit her at www.reneewatson.net
Nikkolas Smith is a Houston, Texas-born Artivist, picture book author, and Hollywood film illustrator. He is the author/illustrator of The Golden Girls of Rio, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, My Hair Is Poofy And That’s Okay, and World Cup Women. As a Black illustrator, Nikkolas is focused on creating captivating art that can spark important conversations around social justice in today’s world and inspire meaningful change. Many of his viral, globally shared and published sketches are included in his book Sunday Sketch: The Art of Nikkolas. Nikkolas also speaks on his Artivism at conferences, workplaces, and schools around the world, and leads workshops in digital painting, character, and movie poster design. He lives in Los Angeles, California. Learn more here: www.NIKKOLAS.art
Derrick Barnes is the author of the New York Times bestseller The King of Kindergarten, as well as the critically acclaimed multi-award-winning picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the 2018 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, and the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Young Readers. In 2020, he became the only author, in the history of the award, to have won the Kirkus Prize twice for his twelfth release, the New York Times bestseller, I Am Every Good Thing. Derrick is a graduate of Jackson State University (BA-Marketing ’99) and was the first African-American male creative copywriter hired by greeting cards giant Hallmark Cards. He is a native of Kansas City, MO, but currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his enchanting wife, Dr. Tinka Barnes, and their four sons, the Mighty Barnes Brothers.
Kimberly Annece Henderson is a writer and curator based in New York City. Her work centers on genealogy and Black American lineages through photography, historical preservation, and archives. She currently facilitates digital projects for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and is the creator and curator of @emalineandthem, an archival photo collection on Instagram of everyday Black Americans from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a poet, novelist, essayist, and professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. She has authored five collections of poetry and a novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois. Her book The Age of Phillis, a reexamination of the life of the American poet Phillis Wheatley Peters based on fifteen years of archival research, was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and won the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2021 USA Fellowship.
Have a question for Nikole and the book's contributors? Click here to submit a question!
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