This year’s Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture will feature “The 1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones. The 3:30 p.m., March 4 event will be online, and registrations are required in order to receive a Zoom link.
New York Times Magazine’s “The 1619 Project” – named for the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in America – features essays and art by Black creators on the relationship between slavery and culture. Hannah-Jones writes about racial injustice for the magazine, and has chronicled the manner in which policy created and maintains segregation in housing and schools.
Her essay, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True,” won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. She has been named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists.
Hannah-Jones is writing a book on school segregation titled The Problem We All Live With. The book’s name mirrors that of her radio story, which aired on This American Life. For that radio feature, she won a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award.
She founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting with the goal of increasing reporters and editors of color.
Hannah-Jones will be interviewed by Myisha Cherry, a UCR assistant professor of philosophy who hosts and produces The UnMute Podcast , in which Cherry interviews a diverse group of young philosophers.
The Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture series was started in 1966 by the late Howard H “Tim” Hays, then editor of The Press-Enterprise newspaper. Hays was a leader in the Citizens University Committee that lobbied the state to open a University of California campus in Riverside, and then served as a founding member of the UCR Board of Trustees.
His son, Tom Hays, subsequently endowed the lectureship. Speakers have included media notables including Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, Post editor Ben Bradlee, and — for the past three years — Frank Bruni of The New York Times, Maria Hinojosa of Futuro Media, and David Leonhardt of The New York Times.
