NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES IS A “SAINT”
My editor said to me that the article on page 5 of Point of View, a statement made by Nikole Hanna-Jones, a full-time journalist at The New York Times, is so long that most people will not read it. I read it. But I agreed that some who simply don’t read much but should read more and others who are masters at avoiding racial truths will view it as just another opportunity to skip uncomfortable pages. I, on the other hand, will never allow such important dialogue to go by unnoticed by all who even so much as glance at the pages of this paper. Her spoken words provide sacred testimony of how Black folks can rise up in powerful unison against the racial persecution by privileged White folks who know and deny historical truths in an attempt to maintain and spread their historical duplicity to other generations of White folks by attacking what she and her scholarship stand for, which is why I devoted our entire Front Page Index to her words. She made me proud to be who I am as I read her defiant words describing the warrior she is and, by inference, the warrior we all must be or become to defeat the racist cynicism that has engulfed so much of contemporary White America.

THE 1619 PROJECT
The 1619 Project is an educational project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others and “is designed to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of Slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative. It was launched in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the 1st enslaved African arriving in colonial Virginia in 1619.” WHITE OPPOSITION TO THE 1619 PROJECT
Many White people oppose the 1619 project, especially in states controlled by Republicans, primarily because it tells the truth about American history rather than cloaking it in a veil of false innocence. Their opposition is especially virulent when school districts plan to adopt it into their curriculums.

THE 1619 TENURE BATTLE
Nikole Hannah-Jones was offered a tenured professorship in a special University of North Carolina School of Journalism program which the Board of Trustees of the university ultimately denied her because powerful trustees were upset over her connection to the 1619 project. In a compromise, the trustees offered her a 5 year contract when every person who had ever been hired in the program had been hired with full tenure. The nationwide uproar was so tremendous that she was eventually offered tenure but refused it and instead accepted an even better tenured position at the Howard University School of Journalism.