My experience attending “An evening with Nikole Hannah-Jones” at Bovard
By: Tamanna Sood ‘24
“I didn’t get into journalism to make powerful people comfortable”
On February 21, I attended An evening with Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of ‘The 1619 Project’ at the Bovard Auditorium. This talk was the inaugural event of the Charlotta Bass Media Trailblazer Speaker Series at USC and was put on by the Visions and Voices initiative that highlights university-arts and humanities on campus.
For those who may not know, Nikole Hannah Jones is an highly decorated investigative journalist renowned for her coverage of civil rights and Black history. She is most famous for being the creator of The 1619 Project. The 1619 Project is a long form journalism project initiated by Jones and the New York Times that reframes US history by looking at it through the lens of slavery. The project was launched as a single 100 page issue of the New York Times Magazine in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in colonial Virginia and has grown into a podcast and an even a docuseries on Hulu. If you’re a fan of podcasts or documentaries, I highly recommend adding The 1619 Project to your lists.
Being able to attend this event and listen to Nikole Hannah Jones felt like a dream come true. For young journalists, and especially young women journalists of color, Jones is a beacon of hope and inspiration as she has shattered every glass ceiling in the newsroom and created a new legacy for generations to come.
This event was highly anticipated and well attended with the majority of attendees coming from outside the campus community. I arrived at 5:30 p.m. on the dot and still wasn’t able to grab a designated student seat in the mezzanine area. The theater, which seats upwards of a thousand people, was almost filled to the brim by the beginning of the event.
The event was opened by the SoCal VoCals, a historic acapella group that was founded in 1966. The group sang Sam Cooke’s, “A Change is Gonna Come,” a song known for its historical significance in the Civil Rights Movement, and the beautiful booming voice of lead singer Janina Colucci reverberated through the theater with the lyrics, “It's been a long time coming, but I know a change ‘gon come.”
President Carol Folt shared her personal excitement to hear Nikole Hannah Jones as she took the time to introduce her and moderator Dr. Allissa V. Richardson, an Annenberg professor and the founder of the Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab. The Charlotta Bass lab is the “West Coast’s first extended reality (XR) Black media archive and experimental storytelling space.” President Folt also took the time to remind the audience of USC’s connection with Black history and how Martin Luther King once stood in Bovard with a crowd of over 1,800 people and preached about Black Liberation, even through the fear of bomb threat.
Folt also took the time to note the power of journalism and the importance of storytelling in every era of American history. As an Annenberg student, I couldn’t help but feel extremely proud and honored to attend a university and learn in a school with this much reverence and support for the practice.
Nikole Hannah Jones and Dr. Richardson’s conversation ranged from personal history to advice for journalists to personal advocacy.
Dr. Richardson began by asking about the The 1619 Project docuseries, which featured Jones traveling back to her hometown. Dr. Richardson asked Jones about her childhood and personal experiences growing up in Waterloo, Iowa during the time of school integration. I loved learning about Jones’s high school history teacher, Mr. Dial, and how he impacted the trajectory of her life and career by pushing to join the school newspaper.
Her humility and her easy going nature shone through the entire conversation. She was encouraging, funny, and genuine while holding a commanding presence in the room.
When the first student to ask a question didn’t introduce himself, she said, “If you were my student, you would have introduced yourself first.” Her words had just the right amount of sterness and support that any good educator would imbue into their students. Time seemed to move at the speed of light in Bovard that night as an hour soon dwindled into seconds.
It’s a night I don’t think I will ever forget because, as a young journalist, it left me inspired and encouraged. Oftentimes, as a journalist, I fear entering my field because of its instability. However, seeing success stories like Jones’s, I’m reminded that I have a place and that I, too, am capable enough to create something with a global impact.
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