The 1619 Project started with a tweet, says Nikole Hannah-Jones
New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones spearheaded the 1619 Project, a landmark initiative unveiled this summer that marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Britain’s mainland North American colonies. During a visit to Harvard this week, she made a surprising disclosure: While she had considering the project for years beforehand, its development was partly prompted by an exchange on Twitter. “I got into an argument where someone said, ‘Slavery was a long time ago. Why don’t you get over it?’” she said Wednesday evening in a discussion with Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard. The talk drew a capacity crowd to the Smith Campus Center. “I realized we couldn’t get over it because America hasn’t gotten over it, and nobody wants to get over it more than black folks.” This interaction, she said, led her...