0:00

This episode of Super Bowl is supported

0:02

by the new Hulu original series, The

0:04

Sixteen nineteen Project, from Pulitzer

0:06

Prize winning journalist Nikole HannahJones,

0:09

and Academy Award winning director Roger

0:11

Ross Williams. This six part documentary

0:13

series is based on the groundbreaking New York

0:16

Times essays podcast and award

0:18

winning book. The series examines the legacy

0:20

of slavery in America and explores how it

0:22

has shaped nearly all aspects of our society

0:24

today, from policing to music to

0:26

capitalism and our democracy. Watch

0:29

the sixteen nineteen

0:30

project. New episodes premiere Thursday

0:32

starting January twenty sixth, streaming only

0:34

on Hulu. I'm

0:36

Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super

0:38

Soul Conversations, The podcast.

0:41

I believe that one of the most valuable gifts

0:44

you can give yourself is

0:46

time. Taking time

0:48

to be more fully present. Your

0:51

journey to become more inspired and

0:53

connected

0:54

to the deeper world around us starts

0:58

right now. Well,

1:00

Nicole HannahJones. Hello.

1:03

Hello. How are you? I'm good

1:05

and I'm so delighted that

1:08

you have taken the time to talk to me

1:11

about sixteen, nineteen, which I

1:13

know that by now, it's been on

1:15

the best sellers list for so long, and you've

1:17

been around the country, you've been around

1:20

in different parts of the

1:21

world. I'm thinking, this woman is

1:23

talked out. I'm

1:26

never too talked out to to talk with

1:28

you, and I'm honored to be on here in discussing

1:30

this work with you.

1:32

This is, as I say, I

1:35

believed from the

1:37

first Sunday that

1:39

this issue came out in the New

1:41

York Times magazine, and I read it.

1:43

And saw

1:45

your byline and understood

1:48

that you were behind the making of it.

1:50

I believed in that moment that

1:52

this was a supreme moment of destiny

1:55

for you that this thing had

1:57

been, you know, that I know that a thing like

1:59

this does not show up in a person's

2:01

life without a

2:03

lot of soul work, a

2:06

lot of labor, a lot of

2:08

challenge, a lot of struggle to

2:10

get here. So can you tell

2:13

us how working at

2:15

the New York Times and

2:17

making the decision that you wanted this

2:19

to be at the forefront something

2:22

that the magazine would launch out

2:24

into the world. How that how that came to be?

2:27

Oh, god. That's you

2:29

know, there's the short origin story and the long

2:31

origin story. And in some

2:33

ways, I feel like I've been working

2:35

towards the sixteen nineteen project

2:38

since I was fifteen years old. That's

2:41

when I first came across the date,

2:43

sixteen, nineteen, I grew

2:46

up in the Midwest. I grew up in Iowa,

2:49

in a very white state, but

2:51

in a small town that there were still enough

2:53

black folks to segregate us. So I

2:55

grew up on the black side of town. I was bus to

2:57

white schools, and

2:59

my high school offered a one semester, black

3:01

studies elective. In class

3:04

changed my life. I mean, I say

3:07

that without hyperbole. It really my

3:09

life because, like, all

3:12

black kids like all people,

3:14

I I had always thought to see myself

3:16

in the American story. And

3:19

the fact that we were barely there I

3:21

believe was because we must not have done much

3:23

worthy of of teaching us

3:25

about. And I take this one

3:27

semester class that all of a sudden

3:30

this entire world of knowledge is opened

3:32

up to me. And he

3:34

would ask mister Dial, mister Ray Dial

3:36

to give me books to read on my own, and he

3:39

put before the Mayflower in my hands

3:41

by the Rome Bennett. And that's when I came across

3:43

the date sixteen nineteen. And people

3:46

who know me know I've been obsessed with that date

3:48

since then, that that

3:50

date stood both for a legacy

3:52

and a lineage that black people

3:54

had been here even before the Mayflower

3:56

in sixteen twenty and yet

3:59

every child learns about the

4:00

Mayflower, but the White Lion sixteen

4:02

nineteen had been completely erased

4:04

from our national story. And so

4:06

it stood both for a lineage and

4:09

the power of a ratio and understanding

4:11

who gets to shape our story. So I feel like

4:13

so much of my journalism

4:16

has been about trying to

4:18

show the way this hidden

4:20

history, hidden in plain sight,

4:22

his is shaping our society whether

4:24

we grapple with it or not.

4:26

More of this episode after a short

4:28

break. This episode

4:30

of Super Bowl is supported by the new

4:32

Hulu original series, The Sixteen

4:34

nineteen Project, from Pulitzer Prize

4:36

winning journalist Nicole HannahJones,

4:38

and Academy Award winning director, Roger

4:40

Ross Williams. This six part documentary

4:43

series is based on the groundbreaking New

4:45

York Times' says podcast and

4:47

award winning book of the same name. The

4:49

series sheds light on America's complex

4:51

relationship with slavery by examining

4:53

its legacy. And explores how it has shaped

4:55

nearly all aspects of society today,

4:58

from policing, to music, to capitalism,

5:00

and even the principles of our democracy

5:02

itself. Watch the sixteen nineteen

5:04

project. New episodes premiere

5:06

Thursday starting January twenty sixth,

5:08

streaming only on Hulu. And

5:11

since the project you've won, the

5:14

Pulitzer Oprah's named

5:16

Times most influential

5:18

one hundred people in the world, author

5:21

and creator of this profound

5:24

book of the sixteen nineteen

5:26

project, the origin story, which

5:28

became a number one best seller immediately,

5:30

an n double ACP image award

5:32

winner, when you were

5:35

incubating this idea. Did

5:38

you feel somewhere

5:40

inside yourself that the

5:42

power of it to resonate in the

5:44

world was what it has

5:46

become? So, no.

5:50

I knew that it was a powerful

5:52

and important idea. And I knew,

5:55

you know, I'm the creator of the project, but

5:57

the project brings together dozens

6:00

of voices. Most of them ascendance

6:02

of American slavery. It is it is truly

6:04

a collectively told story.

6:06

So I knew the power of what we were trying

6:09

to do. But as you know, just because

6:11

you produce something important and

6:13

something that you feel is powerful. And that

6:15

may be powerful. It doesn't mean that the

6:17

world responds to it in that way.

6:19

So I had no idea, especially

6:22

with the initial project that published in

6:24

the magazine in twenty nineteen, whether

6:27

anyone would read it, whether it would outlast

6:29

the very short American attention span,

6:31

you know, after a day or two, slavery

6:33

is something that we've kind of willfully not

6:36

to to deal with in our society. So

6:38

here was an entire project, tens of

6:40

thousands of words, excavating the

6:42

legacy of slavery. I had no idea.

6:44

How people would

6:45

respond. And in fact, the night before publication,

6:48

I was sort of a complete mess.

6:50

So describe that scene. Describe that scene

6:52

because the way the magazine works who

6:54

have all of the printed pages.

6:56

They're, like, up on a board. You're

6:58

looking at them. You're there with your

7:00

friend, Wesley Norris, who's also with

7:02

the Times who'd written the music

7:04

essay, and you all are looking

7:06

at what's now gonna be put together

7:08

and gonna go to

7:09

print. Yeah. It was this moment

7:11

where, you know, I'm like, I

7:13

somehow got the New York Times to dedicate

7:16

an entire issue of the magazine to

7:18

excavating the legacy of slavery

7:20

and allowing all

7:22

of these black folks to write this thing, I

7:24

mean, every single page of the magazine and

7:26

to see it all up on

7:29

the wall and to know I

7:31

had kind of one mandate,

7:33

which is that we would be unflinching, that

7:35

we weren't going to worry about making

7:37

it palatable. We weren't going to worry

7:39

about if people were turned off

7:41

by it or upset by it, like, we were going

7:43

to tell this story the

7:45

way we felt we needed to tell it.

7:47

And as we stood in that room, was

7:49

like, wow, we we've done this

7:51

thing. And Wesley and I

7:53

we both got very emotional. We broke down

7:55

and cried. And as you know, journalists, you know,

7:57

this is not something we're

7:59

supposed to do. We don't we we really

8:01

try to push down our emotion with

8:03

our work, but this is the

8:05

most important

8:07

but also painful work I've ever

8:09

done to spend months

8:12

and months and now years just immersed

8:14

in barbirism and brutality,

8:17

pain of what black Americans have

8:20

experienced, but also the resilience

8:22

and the ingenuity in the way that

8:24

we've always resisted and and

8:26

and it started our humanity. It was just

8:28

deeply emotional. But In

8:31

the end, it ended up clearly being bigger

8:33

than any of us could have

8:35

ever

8:35

imagined. And I think it is because we

8:37

were determined to be influencing no

8:39

matter how people would respond to it.

8:42

I remember the

8:44

associated press saying that the

8:46

sixteen nineteen project had

8:48

become a touch tone for America's

8:50

reckoning over slavery

8:53

and the reverberations for

8:55

black Americans today. And

8:58

it struck me because in the

9:00

beginning of the book, there is a

9:02

professor, Kwame Jeffries, who

9:04

says, we all suffer

9:07

for the poor history that

9:09

we've been taught. I mean, in that

9:11

line just struck me so because I remember

9:13

all the years in the Oprah show

9:15

having conversations about race

9:17

and trying to get white

9:19

people to see why

9:21

we needed to talk about what

9:23

had happened in this country

9:25

with slavery. And, you know, and you know, the

9:27

lines Why do we need to know that? Because I'm

9:29

not responsible for what my answers did

9:32

and that so I remember once

9:34

explaining to this woman like, Okay? You

9:36

had a grandmother. Right? And your grandmother

9:38

was able to get a job. And right?

9:40

And then your mother was able to get a job. And

9:42

your mother was able to do what she want to do in

9:44

life. And because of that, now you were born

9:46

trying to explain it, like, through

9:48

personal heritage. Right.

9:51

But the real truth

9:53

is people don't connect their

9:55

own personal backgrounds to what their

9:57

grandmothers and grandmothers were able to

9:59

do to what hours were

10:01

not. That's right. And so that's why

10:03

that line struck me so from

10:05

Professor Jefferies when he

10:06

says, we all suffer

10:08

for the poor history we've

10:10

been taught. Absolutely. I

10:12

mean, what what I realized

10:14

is there are some people

10:16

who don't care

10:18

about. The fact -- Yeah. -- they don't care about

10:20

what happened. And there's no amount of facts, you

10:22

can you can show

10:24

them that will convince them. That we

10:26

are not this great and exceptional country of

10:28

our mythology. But I don't actually

10:30

think that's most people. You know, we've

10:32

all been taught kind of the same

10:35

collective lives and obfuscations, and

10:37

it's the silences that tell us

10:39

as much as as what we're taught.

10:42

And because of that, you know,

10:44

what I say is we've all been taught the history

10:46

of a country that doesn't exist.

10:48

And because we're taught

10:50

this really false narrative,

10:52

we can't grapple honestly

10:55

and successfully with our defining

10:57

tensions and inequality. And so

10:59

what this project really tries to do is fill

11:01

in those gaps and say, actually,

11:03

when you look at your society, this

11:05

is what caused it. This is the truth

11:08

of what built the society that we live

11:10

in. What's always interesting,

11:12

Oprah's is. Of course, I hear all the time.

11:14

Well, my my ancestors never own lays

11:16

or my ancestors didn't get here until after eighteen

11:18

sixty five, what does that happen to

11:20

me? But those people never

11:22

say that about the declaration of independence

11:25

with your ancestors also didn't sign. And

11:27

they don't say that about, you know, the constitution

11:30

or all of the great things

11:32

about this country that their ancestors

11:34

did not personally engage it.

11:36

They accept that and they claim

11:38

that part of their history. And what

11:40

we're arguing is you have to claim it all. This

11:42

is our collective past, And

11:44

this collective past is shaping

11:46

our collective presence and you don't

11:48

get to pick and choose which parts of

11:50

that history you want to own and claim

11:52

and which parts you want to

11:55

distance yourself from. It's all of

11:57

our history and it is shaping

11:59

our society whether we acknowledge it

12:01

or not.

12:01

And

12:01

that is why we all suffer from the poor

12:04

history. And

12:04

we do

12:05

talk. We

12:05

do. America is exceptional in many

12:08

ways that we would not want

12:10

to admit. So you you

12:12

start out on page eleven

12:14

of this profound book

12:16

saying, the United States is a

12:18

nation founded on both an ideal

12:20

and a lie. Our

12:23

declaration of independence approved

12:25

on July four seventeen seventy six for

12:27

claims that all men to equal and doubt by the

12:29

creator with certain unalienable

12:31

rights. But the white men who drafted

12:33

those words did not believe

12:35

them to be true for the hundreds and thousands

12:37

of black people in their midst. A right

12:39

to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness

12:41

did not include fully

12:43

one fifth of the new

12:45

country. Yet despite being violently

12:47

denied the freedom and justice promise to

12:49

all, black Americans believe

12:51

fervently in the American creed.

12:53

Are you most fascinated by the

12:56

fact that even

12:58

when those words were

13:00

decreed and they did not apply to

13:02

black

13:02

people, somehow we

13:05

heard and believed that they did.

13:08

Yes. I mean, that to me

13:10

is the beauty of the American story.

13:12

If we can tell the American story from

13:14

the bottom and not from the

13:16

top. Here we have a people who are

13:18

literally only written in the

13:20

constitution as property. And

13:23

None of these words were meant to

13:25

include them. And yet, they

13:27

are they are actors in

13:29

the revolutionary period. And they

13:31

are reading and hearing these words

13:33

of liberation and say, actually,

13:35

that's that's hypocrisy. And

13:38

we're going to actually take those

13:40

words literally. You you

13:42

you know, what what we don't think about

13:44

is the declaration of independence is a

13:46

succession document. This is the

13:48

document where the columnists,

13:50

the white columnists are laying out all of

13:52

the crimes that they believe the British have

13:54

committed against them to say this is why

13:56

we need to break off from you and have our own

13:58

freedom. That opening stands

14:00

that you just read. It's not what the document

14:02

is. It wasn't a liberation document. It

14:04

was a succession document. And yet

14:06

black people read that opening stands

14:08

and say, oh, you cannot

14:10

abide slavery and have

14:12

this as your opening declaration

14:14

of this new nation. That these two

14:16

things are in conflict, and we are

14:18

going to take that, stands, and hold

14:20

it at face value, that the

14:22

people who did not know freedom.

14:24

The ones who valued it the most and

14:27

said we will take and fight to make

14:29

these words true. And that really

14:31

has been the role of black

14:33

people, as you know, generation after

14:35

generation after generation is

14:37

to try to make manifest these

14:40

ideals of freedom where we know when those

14:42

white colonists them. They didn't believe they

14:44

applied to women. They didn't believe they applied

14:46

to indigenous people. They didn't even

14:48

believe they applied to white men who didn't

14:50

own land. But black peoples took a

14:52

very expansive view and that's because they are

14:54

on the bottom. So if anyone doesn't have

14:56

rights, anyone above them,

14:58

that means they don't have rights. And

15:00

that has been kind of the sacred role of

15:02

black

15:02

Americans, so we rarely get the credit

15:05

for it. From Pulitzer Prize winning

15:07

journalist Nikole HannahJones Academy

15:09

Award winning director Roger Ross

15:11

Williams comes the sixteen nineteen

15:13

project. A six part documentary

15:15

series based on the groundbreaking New York

15:17

Times essays, podcast, and award

15:19

winning book. The series examines the

15:21

Legacy of slavery in America and bores

15:23

how it has shaped nearly all aspects

15:25

of our society today from policing,

15:27

to music, to capitalism, and

15:30

our democracy. Watch the sixteen

15:32

nineteen project premiering January

15:34

twenty six on Hulu.

15:36

You say in the

15:39

sixteen nineteen project book

15:42

that our myths have not served

15:44

us well We are most

15:46

unequal of the western democracies. We

15:48

incarcerate our citizens at the

15:50

highest rates. We suffer the

15:52

greatest income inequality. Americans

15:55

lifespans are shorter than those of the people

15:57

in the nations we compare

15:59

ourselves to. And the sixteen

16:01

nineteen project seeks to explain

16:03

this present day reality and

16:05

challenge these myths not to

16:07

tear down or further

16:09

divide this country as some critics

16:11

suggest but so that we can truly

16:14

become the country we already

16:16

claim to be. Why do you think

16:18

there has been such resistance

16:20

has a level of

16:23

vitreous attack and resistance

16:25

to the sixteen nineteen project

16:27

and what you're trying to say about

16:30

Black American's contribution to this

16:31

country. Has it surprised you?

16:34

Absolutely. I knew there would be a resistance,

16:36

and I knew there would be criticism and

16:38

critique And frankly, there should be. This

16:40

was an ambitious project. We

16:42

we were attempting to make an evocative

16:45

argument. And obviously,

16:47

the reason the project exists in the first

16:49

place is we have not wanted to

16:51

grapple with this past.

16:53

And certainly, We don't want to acknowledge the way

16:55

that past the shape being our present,

16:57

but I couldn't have

16:59

ever imagined the full

17:01

weight of the power. That has come

17:03

down against this project. In

17:05

speaking with other historians, no

17:07

one can think of a a

17:10

single text that has been

17:12

banned by name in so

17:14

many different laws. We've seen this whole

17:16

anti critical race, propaganda

17:18

campaign arise because of the

17:20

project I I could not

17:22

have imagined. You know, I've been a

17:24

journalist for twenty years, and I've

17:26

written about racial and equality my

17:28

entire

17:28

career, but nothing I've ever done

17:31

has received this type of response. Yes.

17:33

Is it this it it is the sixteen

17:35

nineteen project that started the whole critical because

17:37

I've never heard of critical race theory.

17:40

Yes. So first, the laws

17:42

were specifically against the sixteen nineteen project,

17:44

and many of those laws didn't pass.

17:47

There's laws pending in about two dozen

17:49

states, some of them have passed,

17:51

some haven't, but then they just began

17:53

this kind of larger campaign

17:56

against what they call critical race theory. But

17:58

really, of course, as you know, was

18:00

teaching any types of histories or anti

18:02

racist text that they didn't

18:04

like. So to me it speaks

18:06

to more than anything

18:08

the sixteen nineteen project is a work of

18:10

memory. It is a work that is

18:12

challenging kind of our collective memory

18:14

and that the the nationalistic stories

18:17

that we've all been told.

18:19

And what memory or history

18:21

as we call it does? Is

18:23

it either legitimizes power or de

18:26

legitimizes power. It either

18:28

justifies our current hierarchies or

18:30

it exposes

18:31

them. Let's speak more to this

18:34

idea of memory because one of the things

18:36

you write, I think this came

18:38

from Peter Wood wrote in a

18:40

nineteen ninety nine paper on

18:42

slavery. And denial. He said, after all, as

18:44

several imminent academics have recently

18:46

reminded us, nations need

18:48

to control national memory.

18:52

Because nations keep their shape

18:54

by shaping their citizens'

18:57

understanding of the past. And

18:59

so in reading sixteen

19:01

nineteen, you come to understand,

19:03

I mean, even I who thought I

19:05

knew lot about African American history and grew

19:07

up reciting Sajerna Truth and

19:10

Fannie Lou Hammers realized

19:13

that you

19:13

know, I really just heard about Christmas addicts, and I

19:16

knew that

19:16

he was the first to fall in the revolutionary

19:18

war. And then as far as

19:22

I knew there wasn't anybody else who was fighting

19:24

or fell, you know. Right. There was no

19:26

other contribution. And so

19:29

the way the history has been shaped has

19:31

been shaped in a way to

19:33

cause a certain kind of understanding.

19:35

And one of the things that you say

19:38

sixteen nineteen project is it's almost like worshiping

19:42

those people who participated in

19:44

the war as as

19:46

demigods, you know?

19:47

Yes. I mean, think about, you

19:49

know, these these kind of mystical founders.

19:53

And and we we deify them.

19:55

We basically don't treat

19:57

them as political beings,

20:00

right, as as human beings -- As real

20:01

beings. -- and

20:01

-- Right. -- who are complicated, who

20:04

have various motivations, some of them

20:06

pure, many of them

20:08

not. And so we're

20:09

saying in one sentence, all men are

20:11

created equal as they go home to

20:13

their slaves. Right. And so what we've

20:15

been taught is that what's important is

20:18

they wrote these words and and fought for freedom.

20:21

And well, you know, yeah, they had slaves,

20:23

but it was complicated, and we don't really wanna

20:25

talk too much about that. And

20:27

and so have this kind of

20:29

idea of these, as

20:32

I said, these demigods who

20:34

bring this idea of of

20:36

a free nation into the world. And then we

20:38

aren't told to ignore the fact that the

20:41

majority of our founders enslaved

20:43

two in beings that The

20:45

man who wrote the declaration wasn't in

20:47

slavery, that the man who's the father of the

20:49

constitution wasn't in slavery, that the man who

20:51

wrote the bill of rights wasn't in

20:53

slavery. That the most powerful men in our society

20:55

got their wealth and privilege

20:57

from human bondage. And we've

20:59

been taught to treat that as an asterisk

21:02

because how does

21:04

one hold these two things in our mind at the

21:06

same time that as Edmund

21:08

Morgan said, the historian in

21:10

America, Slabion freedom were

21:12

born at the same time. But we

21:14

only wanna talk about one of

21:16

those stories. And so I always

21:18

say that black people are

21:20

the most inconvenient people in the American mythology.

21:22

Right? Because how do you explain our

21:24

presence without having to acknowledge

21:27

this grave hypothescy upon

21:29

which we were built. And so we just get written

21:31

out of the story even though we're one

21:33

fifth of the population at

21:35

the revolution, even though slavery is practiced in

21:37

all thirteen colonies, even though our most

21:40

wealthy and privileged men in America

21:42

are all slave owners We

21:44

are taught to think that black people are

21:46

in consequential, that we're

21:48

literally cattle. Right? We're not even paying

21:50

attention to the war. We're not engaging

21:52

in the war. And none of that

21:54

is true. And and our

21:57

existence here has always

21:59

been a point of tension and

22:01

black Americans have always serve

22:03

as agents and actors in any conflict

22:05

we've had because black people are trying to

22:07

get free and whoever was promising

22:09

that is who we would engage

22:12

with. So I remember even the first

22:14

time that I even contemplated the

22:16

role of black people in the revolutionary period,

22:18

when when I was researching this

22:20

project. So here I am African

22:22

American studies major. I've

22:24

I've studied black history for more than

22:26

twenty five years. I've always studied, like,

22:29

the the eighteen hundreds in the period

22:31

around the civil war. And I

22:33

realized, I've never even

22:35

contemplated what were black people doing

22:37

at the period of the revolution?

22:39

And what role did we play? And that's

22:41

when you realize how intentional

22:43

our erasure is from that because

22:45

you just cannot further the

22:47

myth of these freedom seeking colonists.

22:50

If you acknowledge that part of the

22:52

reason they wanted freedom was George Washington was saying,

22:54

the British are gonna treat us like we treat our

22:57

slaves. Right? Like they know what

22:59

they're doing. They're acknowledging all the time

23:02

that they have to have this property in

23:04

human beings that this is where they got their

23:06

wealth and they know it's wrong, because

23:08

they don't want to be treated way that they're treating enslaved

23:10

people. And we have not wanted

23:12

to grapple with that. It is

23:14

the known world. It is it is

23:16

the silence. It's not that they're

23:19

saying we don't

23:19

participate. They just erased us from the

23:22

story. I think when I read

23:24

the essay, so profound about

23:26

it is that you

23:28

and the team

23:30

of SAS that you chose were

23:32

able to connect the dots

23:34

to answer the

23:37

question that so many people pose to

23:39

you and that I've heard over the years, what's

23:41

that got to do with me? Yeah. Why do I

23:43

need to about that? Has

23:45

nothing to do with now. And what you all

23:47

have been able to do through the sixteen

23:49

nineteen project is allow

23:51

us to see how it has

23:54

affected everything. Yes.

23:58

Even traffic. I mean, that was the thing that got

24:00

me. Even

24:01

traffic. Can you talk about that essay? Yes. So

24:03

I always say at my at my pettiest,

24:05

which can be pretty petty.

24:07

The sixteen nineteen project is

24:09

answering that question every black person gets,

24:11

which is slavery was a long time ago, why don't

24:13

you get over it? So I wanted

24:16

to create a project that showed

24:18

how do you get over something that is as foundational

24:20

to your society as anything

24:22

can be foundational. Right?

24:24

Almost nothing in America's older than

24:27

slavery. The English landed downtown is sixteen o

24:29

seven. Twelve years later, we've begun

24:31

African slavery. Our legal,

24:33

political, social, cultural,

24:36

artistic, medical systems are

24:38

all built around slavery and

24:40

the justification of slavery. So I

24:42

wanted this project to be about

24:44

America right now. And to say, we're

24:46

going to show you all of the

24:48

surprising ways that slavery is still

24:50

shaping the society that we live in

24:52

today, that it isn't something

24:54

that happened a long time ago. That

24:56

our society was built on slavery and

24:58

anti black racism, and our

25:00

society is still being shaped by that. So

25:02

we came up with a bunch of different

25:04

areas that we hope would be surprising

25:07

and then trace them back. And yes,

25:09

including traffic in Atlanta. Right?

25:11

So when you're sitting in traffic in Atlanta and

25:13

you're like, this whole highway system

25:15

makes no sense if you want to move

25:17

people quickly from one place to another,

25:20

You understand that within the logic of racism, it

25:22

makes sense. So this is an essay by

25:24

Princeton historian Kevin Cruz that

25:27

talks about when they

25:29

were designing the freeway system in

25:31

Atlanta, they didn't design the system to

25:33

move people from one place to another

25:35

as efficiently as possible. They designed

25:37

the system to help segregate, right, to

25:39

create the spatial barriers

25:41

between white and black communities.

25:43

So they ran freeways

25:45

directly through often prosperous black

25:47

communities, and they've created them

25:49

to create these physical

25:51

barriers to stop neighborhoods

25:53

from integrating and

25:55

from black people from having easy

25:57

access to white neighborhoods in Atlanta.

25:59

And we also actually see this

26:01

in many cities across the

26:03

country where The highway systems

26:05

were used in

26:07

explicitly racist ways to

26:09

destroy middle class black neighborhoods

26:11

and to divide black neighborhoods

26:13

from white

26:14

neighborhoods. Robert Moses in New York

26:16

City making the tunnels only

26:18

so high so that the buses couldn't go through so that

26:20

black and Hispanic people wouldn't be able to take the

26:22

bus to get to get to the parks on the

26:25

other

26:25

side. Absolutely. And you could see this,

26:27

you know, in Atlanta where why we

26:29

haven't seen the expansion of public transit.

26:32

So the population of Atlanta grows

26:34

and grows and grows, and yet public transit

26:36

does not go out onto the white

26:38

suburbs because there is a

26:40

desire not to allow, like,

26:42

people to have easy access to these white

26:44

suburban rains. So when you when

26:46

you begin to pull

26:48

back the layers, I

26:51

always argue that the the project is like

26:53

taking the red pill in the matrix. That

26:55

suddenly you see, the lengthiest

26:57

slavery is everywhere. That we can go

26:59

around and see our world and have

27:01

no idea what built it. But if you

27:03

begin to read the sixteen nineteen

27:05

project in the text at the

27:07

underlie it, you see that so much of the

27:09

architecture of our society can

27:11

actually be traced back to the Lexia

27:12

slavery. Yeah, and I think it's an important

27:15

book for people who want the answer

27:17

to why we where

27:19

we are -- Yeah. -- today in this

27:21

country. You know, particularly in

27:23

terms of racial

27:25

relations, all of the

27:28

egregious acts against

27:30

black people that have occurred since

27:33

slavery. Including those one

27:35

hundred years of Jim Crow

27:37

and violence and domestic

27:39

terrorism. What is the thing that strikes you

27:41

the most as the most devastating.

27:44

Oh,

27:44

god. That's a

27:47

that's a hard question to answer

27:49

because just so much is

27:52

devastating. You know, Dorothy Roberts

27:54

SA on race where,

27:56

you know, so often when we talk

27:58

about slavery, we about the violence

28:00

against men, but the violence that

28:03

black women face was often a sexual

28:05

violence. Mhmm. We

28:07

outlaw importing Africans

28:09

into America to be slaves in eighteen

28:11

o eight. And yet, by the eighteen

28:13

sixties, we have the largest population of

28:15

enslaved people in the world.

28:18

That happens through forced reproduction

28:20

where black women enslaved women

28:22

were forced through sexual assault

28:24

and sexual violence and sexual

28:27

to reproduce slavery literally

28:29

through their wounds. That's some of the

28:31

most, I think traumatizing reading and

28:34

reporting that I've done and yet,

28:36

here we are. So that resilience

28:38

of black women who were determined even

28:40

in those circumstances to

28:43

raise their their children and raise other people's children

28:45

and and to survive is

28:47

is tragically

28:48

beautiful. I think though Let me

28:51

just tell people who Dorothy Roberts is she's a

28:53

leading scholar at race gender law. She read

28:55

an essay on how the regulation

28:57

of black women's bodies

29:00

played a central role in the justification

29:03

of slavery. It's on

29:05

page fifty four that she says,

29:07

whether free or enslaved black

29:09

women were portrayed as sexually

29:12

licentious, always consenting,

29:15

and therefore un rapeable.

29:18

Yes. And literally, legally,

29:20

an enslaved woman could not

29:22

be raped by law, that

29:25

black woman had no right to

29:27

bodily autonomy actually any

29:29

way that a black woman could

29:31

be impregnated no matter by

29:33

whom was considered to be a good thing.

29:35

So we actually had a

29:37

legal system that said black women

29:39

were un rapeable. And so when

29:41

you then look at our society

29:43

today where black women

29:45

are not believed when they're sexually

29:47

assaulted, where their sexual

29:49

assaults are not taken seriously. And

29:51

so just quickly to

29:53

to justify the fact that

29:55

you're saying black women who are enslaved cannot

29:57

be raped because, you know, a

29:59

a cattle can't be raped. Or

30:01

it's property? Because it's property.

30:04

Exactly. And so and the same woman can't be

30:06

raped. But you know that and

30:08

the same woman is not a a

30:10

cattle and that she is not

30:12

a horse. So then it by saying

30:14

black women are just sexually promissuous

30:16

anyway. Black women actually don't

30:18

ever say no to sex. can't

30:20

legally be raped, but they also just can't

30:22

be raped because black women want

30:24

sex all the time. Well,

30:26

we see those same stereotypes, of course, in how

30:28

we view black women today as

30:31

promiscuous as, you know, even

30:33

young girls, who

30:35

are who are adultified and

30:37

treated as if they are full

30:39

sexual beings. That is all a

30:41

carryover from that legacy. And that essay

30:43

is one of the the, I think, In in a bookful of

30:45

hard

30:45

essays, that's one of the hardest.

30:47

You said that also one of your favorite essays and

30:49

one that may surprise we as a

30:51

chapter titled dispossession. White

30:54

Harvard historian, Tia

30:56

Miles. And she makes the connection between

30:58

the African American

31:00

and Native American

31:01

script. What did she write that was most striking to

31:04

you? So I

31:06

always knew a big hole in the

31:08

first iteration of this project in

31:10

the magazine was that we didn't deal with

31:12

Semler colonialism, that we

31:14

didn't really talk about indigenous

31:16

slavery, as well as indigenous people, and

31:18

the fact that you can't expand slavery in the

31:20

United States without the theft of

31:22

indigenous lands. I I

31:24

struggled in that first iteration

31:26

to to figure out what's the what is

31:28

the right way to tell that story where it still

31:30

fits in with the project, which is about

31:33

African slavery. But luckily, Tayo Maio,

31:35

who is Afro indigenous herself,

31:38

agreed to write this essay. And

31:40

but I think it will be most surprising,

31:43

though, to your average reader

31:45

is to learn

31:47

that the five quote unquote

31:49

civilized tribes of the southeast

31:51

engaged in chattel slavery that as

31:53

part of their so called civilization

31:56

process, they became slave

31:58

owners of African people So

32:00

my dad's hometown is Greenwood,

32:03

Mississippi in La Flora County.

32:06

The city and county are named

32:08

after Greenwood La floor

32:10

who was a Choctaw chief. He

32:12

owned about four hundred enslaved

32:14

people and enslaved people.

32:16

So he was very wealthy native

32:18

slave owner and enslaved people were

32:20

marched on the trail of tears and

32:23

enslaved people were enslaved

32:25

by the tribes until a year after the civil

32:27

war in eighteen sixty six when

32:29

the federal government forced those

32:31

tribes to finally end slavery.

32:33

I think that will be pretty

32:36

shocking to a lot of

32:38

Americans who have no idea

32:40

of this history. And

32:42

I have read of reasons the black population

32:44

in Tulsa was so wealthy

32:47

was the only people who were ever

32:49

forced to pay enslaid

32:51

people reparations were some of

32:53

the the slaveholding tribes in Oklahoma

32:55

who had to give when they ended slavery, they had

32:57

to give To the people they

32:59

had once enslaved. And that's actually part

33:02

of why the black population in

33:04

Tulsa was so prosperous as they had actually

33:06

gotten some reparations. So

33:08

that's like for the history nerd in

33:10

me, that's one of those essays where I

33:12

think people will just be completely shocked

33:14

I know. It's mind blowing. I mean,

33:17

literally, mind blowing that

33:19

I didn't know any of

33:20

that. Didn't know it hadn't heard

33:23

of it. Really. It was like one of not even an aha

33:25

moment. It was like, I didn't even know this

33:27

existed existed kind

33:29

of moment. And

33:31

speaking of land, I

33:33

mean, the being able to pass

33:35

on land is

33:37

the opportunity to actually

33:39

create generational wealth. I think one

33:41

of the most offensive

33:43

things to me is the

33:45

way as a person now

33:47

who owns lots of land, I prefer

33:49

land to shoes. Mhmm. Other

33:51

people were buying shoes. I was buying up

33:53

property. And

33:55

it makes me tear up

33:58

because my ability to have

34:00

this right and the freedom to do

34:02

this comes from a

34:04

people who were not even

34:06

allowed that's to have their own land.

34:08

And then even after going to fight

34:10

in the war and coming back after

34:13

the GI bill, not being

34:16

able to allow to get the

34:18

same kind of benefits and, you

34:20

know, homeownership

34:22

that other people who served in in the military. Can you speak to that

34:24

the importance of land? And,

34:26

like, when people say, well, you just

34:28

need to pull yourself up by your bootstrap

34:30

unit.

34:31

Bootstrap It's hard when there

34:34

are

34:34

no boots available.

34:35

Right. Or if you if you finally

34:37

managed to scrape together your dollars to get some,

34:39

they get violently taken from

34:42

you. Right?

34:42

Yes. Yes. So that's the thing. Like, when you

34:44

ask, what what's the hardest part

34:46

of the book? I think it

34:49

is the way that the book helps you

34:52

understand that again and again and

34:54

again, black Americans

34:56

have tried to do the things

34:58

that we are told we have to do to be successful and

35:00

we're never just left a loan.

35:02

Right? So after slavery, what

35:07

what's become to be known as the forty acres and a mule came about

35:09

because black people meet with

35:11

the union generals and

35:14

say, just give us some land so we can be independent. We we

35:16

know how to make wealth from this land. We made

35:18

wealth for all these white people for all

35:22

these years. Give us this land so we can be free and

35:24

forty acres in a meal wasn't even

35:26

given. This land was long to enslave people

35:28

who were

35:30

to work and then pay back for that land and yet that

35:32

land was taken. And then after

35:34

that, black people still somehow managed to

35:36

scrape together

35:38

and start all black towns and to purchase land, and

35:40

they just want to be independent. And

35:42

yet systematically, again and again,

35:44

you see prosperous black towns,

35:48

burned down. You see them flooded. You see in Tulsa,

35:50

prosperous black areas being bombed. You

35:52

see, you know, the story in

35:54

the book by Tremaine Lee about

35:57

a black man who had acquired businesses

35:59

and became a local employer.

36:02

With killed so they could take his land and

36:04

his property, Clio Mohammed in in the podcast talks

36:06

about sugar farmers in Louisiana --

36:08

Yeah. -- have their land. I

36:10

remember that. And so

36:12

that to me is the most tragic

36:14

story, is that there's never

36:16

been a moment where we would

36:18

just allowed to be left

36:20

alone and thrive. Right?

36:22

You you could never make up for two

36:24

hundred 1619 fifty years of stolen labor, of

36:26

our inability to gain property, to

36:28

make wills, pass on

36:30

anything, but even at eighteen sixty

36:32

five, we're still not allowed to

36:34

simply do the same things that

36:36

every other American could do. we

36:38

were acquired in education,

36:40

if we acquired some

36:42

land, it was just taken

36:46

systematically. And and I think that's what's so

36:48

critical is all of these

36:50

individual stories actually amount

36:52

to a system And then we

36:54

wonder, why are black people at the bottom of

36:56

every indicator of well-being? Why

36:58

is black people's wealth no

37:00

matter their education, no matter if

37:02

they're married or not, no matter if they

37:04

go to college, no matter if they buy at

37:06

home, that we have one

37:08

tenth the wealth of

37:10

white Americans And that's

37:12

because the most tragic thing is we have

37:14

never just simply been left alone to

37:16

try to thrive like every

37:18

other

37:18

community. Right. And

37:18

even when you were, you were

37:21

redlined. Yes. Yes. Yes.

37:23

One

37:23

of the things that I think is

37:26

so important you write

37:28

about the American public having an

37:30

outdated and vague sense of the

37:32

past and yet the twenty

37:34

nineteen Washington

37:36

Post poll found that despite their meager knowledge of

37:38

slavery, two thirds of

37:40

Americans believe that the legacy of

37:42

slavery still affects our

37:44

society today.

37:46

They can see and feel the

37:48

truth of this fact. They just haven't learned

37:50

a history that helps them understand

37:53

how and why. So I know

37:55

that this is an effort to help

37:58

people learn the how

38:01

and the

38:03

why have

38:03

you felt that it has been

38:06

received by enough people

38:08

that it's actually making

38:10

a difference? Absolutely. You don't

38:12

see this much power

38:14

aligned against a project that

38:17

is insignificant, that that people

38:19

don't care about. Right? If if if if only

38:22

black people care about the project, you

38:24

wouldn't see Republicans trying to ban

38:26

it. The

38:28

fact that I've been traveling all over the country and what I

38:30

hear again and again from

38:32

people different races, different

38:34

ages, rural

38:36

suburban urban, is they

38:38

say, I just never

38:40

knew. I never knew any of this,

38:42

and and I

38:44

felt like there was more to

38:46

the story than what I was getting,

38:48

but I never knew. And once you

38:50

know, I just think you support different policies.

38:52

I mean, this really what is what

38:54

it's about. We become journalists because we

38:56

understand that narrative drives policy.

38:59

And if we If most of us

39:02

things in the past, but we are

39:04

fundamentally equal society. And

39:06

so any inequality

39:08

that black Americans experience is just their unwillingness

39:10

to take advantage of the bounty

39:12

of America. Then we support very

39:16

stingy punitive, regressive policy that targets the

39:18

pathology of individuals. But

39:20

if you believe that a country

39:24

that for two hundred and fifty years, believe that black people could be

39:26

bought and sold as property, that for one

39:29

hundred years felt that the

39:32

violent exploitation of black Americans

39:34

was justified that a society

39:36

like that is likely the reason

39:38

black Americans

39:40

collectively suffer, then you pass policies that address that.

39:42

And so I know

39:44

that this project is having

39:47

an impact by the

39:50

enemies that this project

39:52

has drawn. Has it

39:54

made you more of a fighter?

39:56

Has it made you more fearless

39:58

or fearful?

39:59

Oh, I'm not I'm not a I'm

40:01

a aries. I'm not a fearful

40:04

person. I mean, the

40:06

beauty of coming from

40:08

where I come from, which is I I

40:10

say all the time, I I came from the dirt and

40:12

to the dirt. I know I can be returned, so I

40:14

I just don't have a lot of worry about

40:16

that. But about studying

40:19

our history and particularly,

40:21

you know, the strong

40:23

black women who who spiritually guide me, people like God

40:25

to be Wells, people like Fannie Lou

40:28

Haymer, you know, go down the

40:30

list, is I

40:32

didn't get into this work with a naive spirit that

40:34

it was going to be all

40:37

accolades and rising high. I knew

40:39

that if I was successful, this

40:42

work would be attacked, and I would be attacked. And I

40:44

I'm just I'm built for it.

40:46

I know that this is my

40:49

purpose. I know this

40:51

work matters. And when I

40:54

go out into particularly

40:56

black communities and they tell

40:58

me I'm praying for you, that

41:00

you don't you have no idea how many people have your back even if

41:02

you don't you don't know that we have

41:05

your back that they

41:08

understand the power of this

41:10

work and what this work means to them. I

41:12

I feel motivated to do what I'm

41:14

doing every

41:15

day. And and sometimes I can't believe that

41:17

actually get to do this for a living.

41:19

What what is the most

41:22

rewarding? III remember in the book you

41:24

talk about going to speak. I think it

41:26

was in Chicago and students

41:28

coming up to you. Yeah. And then there

41:30

was another time, I think you were speaking

41:32

in New Orleans and a little old

41:34

lady comes up to you who's like ninety years

41:35

Nikole. Can you share those stories?

41:38

Yes. So, you know, I'm I'm

41:40

a forty six year old journalist. Who writes up

41:42

really long essays. And so I

41:44

never had any expectation

41:46

would younger people know who I

41:48

am, would younger people care about

41:51

the work, And, you know, I visited Chicago.

41:53

Chicago was the first school district in

41:55

the country to adopt the sixteen nineteen project

41:57

as its curriculum. And

41:59

of course, I I grew up four hours from Chicago. I

42:02

spent a lot of time there, so it was really meaningful. And I

42:04

went to the high school, and these two

42:06

black students who I quote in

42:08

the book. Right? They they talked about how insignificant

42:10

they had felt until they read the

42:12

sixteen nineteen project.

42:14

And for literally my essay

42:16

on democracy, which argues, you

42:18

know, we have been the perfectors of

42:20

this democracy. This is we

42:22

built the the freedoms that

42:24

we have. And the little boy said, it just makes

42:26

me want to work harder

42:28

because I know what my ancestors went

42:30

through. And now

42:32

I feel I feel not only pride but an

42:34

obligation that I have to be

42:36

successful. And then I was in

42:38

New Orleans, And I mean, this

42:40

ninety year old woman came up, tears

42:42

in her eyes, and just

42:44

embraced me and said, thank

42:46

you. I I always

42:48

suspected there was more to the story, but I

42:50

just I didn't have the facts. I

42:52

didn't know. And my

42:54

back is straighter now. And I'm I'm sitting

42:56

here, like, your

42:58

nine year I can't even imagine the things

43:00

that you have lived through as a nine year old

43:02

black woman in the deep south.

43:05

And yet you're thanking me and all I did

43:07

was, you know, write some words. And and that's

43:09

when you know the weight that we carry

43:11

as black people when we've been written

43:13

out of the worry when we've been made to think

43:15

that we we are insignificant

43:18

that we were not contributors

43:20

to the country of

43:22

our birth that we carry a way to

43:24

feeling inferior. I mean, so

43:25

much of what drove the sixteen

43:27

nineteen project is,

43:30

my sense is a child, a feeling embarrassed that we

43:32

came from slavery, a feeling insignificant,

43:35

a feeling

43:37

everyone else came from great

43:39

people who did great things and we just

43:42

waited for what white people were gonna do.

43:44

Right? Like, is that why you were

43:46

embarrassed by your father's

43:48

patriotism and his flying of the American flag? I was embarrassed. So

43:50

by the by the time I was embarrassed by my

43:52

father's patriotism, I had been radicalized

43:54

by miss to dial in

43:56

that one semester of black

43:58

studies. Because by then I knew,

44:00

well, we had this whole

44:02

history, and I and

44:04

I understood I was beginning

44:06

to really grasp what

44:08

this country had done to black

44:09

people. That your father had served in a

44:12

military that

44:14

he is defending the country and then comes home

44:16

and cannot be

44:17

defended. Right. Yeah. Exactly.

44:20

That, you know, my my

44:22

dad is extremely intelligent man born in Jim Crow,

44:24

Mississippi who, you know, drove a

44:26

bus. I started making more money

44:28

than my

44:30

dad when I was doing work study at Notre Dame, you know, and

44:32

and seeing that a man who

44:34

had so much pride in his country

44:37

to me was treated so disrespectfully.

44:40

I didn't understand why he would

44:42

exhibit pride in that way.

44:45

But as I talk about, it was

44:47

in reporting for the sixteen nineteen

44:49

project in reading people who were literally

44:51

born into slavery who were

44:54

saying, we're not gonna leave this

44:56

country. Our ancestors blood is

44:58

in the soil. We fought for this country,

45:00

built this country, and this is

45:02

our land. That I came to

45:04

understand, my father was claiming his lineage. He was

45:06

claiming his legacy. And while

45:10

I'm not gonna fly an American flag in my yard. It's not

45:12

it's not my way of showing patriotism

45:14

that he absolutely had

45:17

a right to do that. And was his way of

45:19

asserting his lineage as a black American

45:21

and as a perfector of democracy. And

45:23

it and it

45:26

took me you know, thirty years to

45:28

understand my father, and I'm only sad that

45:30

he didn't live for me to be

45:32

able to have that conversation

45:34

with

45:34

him. I wanna read what

45:36

you write on page four seventy six

45:38

because it for me, encapsulates I

45:42

think the essence of what you're trying to do with the sixteen

45:44

nineteen project. You say citizens

45:46

inherit not just the glory

45:49

of their nation but it's

45:52

wrongs too. A truly

45:54

great country does not

45:56

ignore or excuse its

45:58

sins. It confronts them. And then to

46:00

make them right. If we are

46:02

to be redeemed, we must do

46:04

what is just. We must finally

46:08

live up to the magnificent ideals upon

46:10

which we were

46:11

founded. Do you think that's

46:13

gonna happen anytime soon?

46:17

With the state of our nation right now,

46:20

sister

46:21

Nicole. I I do not.

46:24

I think we are

46:26

in a once in a generations

46:28

fight for the soul of our

46:30

country. And I ended the

46:32

book that

46:34

way because I do want

46:36

us to understand we have choice that we don't have to

46:38

be that country of our past.

46:42

And the country we live

46:44

in was created. And so

46:46

we can create something new. And

46:48

I want to leave us with a charge that

46:50

we have agency that it is up

46:53

to us. But I also fear that we

46:55

are not rising to the

46:57

moment. And as doctor

47:00

King said, those who wish us to more

47:02

efficiently than those who wish us

47:04

well. So

47:06

these days,

47:07

I've been out on, you know, sixteen nineteen doing

47:10

book talks, and almost always

47:12

now I'm just talking about

47:14

democracy that we're

47:16

in the battle for our lives right now,

47:18

and we have choices to make.

47:21

And where right now do you

47:24

think that we stand in that

47:26

battle? Are we on the edge of the

47:28

are we on the edge of the battlefield?

47:30

I mean, the

47:32

fact that there have been I

47:34

mean, I don't know who

47:37

is watching the hearings

47:40

the January six hearings. We don't know what impact that's

47:42

having on people. You

47:44

do know that candidates who

47:47

still proclaim that the election

47:49

was stolen and using

47:52

all the conspiracy theories

47:54

are being elected by supposedly,

47:57

reasonably minded people. So where do you

47:59

where do you think we are right

48:01

now? And will

48:03

we be okay? I try to

48:05

never predict the future. And

48:08

I don't like being wrong in public, so

48:10

I don't like --

48:10

Okay. -- check. But but but you

48:13

can assess as a journalist who's got your

48:15

finger on the pulse and you're actually out there talking to people

48:17

where we

48:18

are. How bad is it?

48:21

We are in a society that is starting to

48:23

exhibit fascist and authoritarian

48:26

tendencies. And what's

48:28

the solution? Well, what I always

48:30

like to say is I'm I'm a journalist

48:32

and the beauty of that is I just

48:34

expose what's happening and it's up to other people to

48:36

figure out how to have

48:38

an answer. My job. I will say it's not just

48:40

voting. People have voted.

48:42

And the majority

48:46

has elected who they wanted to the

48:48

presidency, to the senate, and to

48:50

the house, and are

48:52

not seeing the

48:54

the fruition that comes from that vote. And you can't simply keep

48:57

telling people to vote, and you

48:59

will not protect their vote. Right.

49:01

So that is not the

49:03

only solution is what I'll say. I'm not sure

49:06

what the solution is

49:08

except American

49:10

people deciding. But they will not accept the erosion of

49:12

democracy, which means we have to

49:14

organize, we have to fight back, and we have

49:16

to have

49:18

a Congress that we have given power to, that

49:20

is willing to play the

49:22

same game that that is being played

49:24

against them.

49:26

So I can't I can't say

49:28

exactly what all the solutions are. My job is

49:30

to point out the problems and to

49:32

try to ring the

49:33

alarm, but there are some very smart people who are working on these issues

49:36

and I hope we'll start paying more

49:38

attention. Do

49:40

you feel the spirit

49:42

and embrace of the ancestors

49:44

with you with this project,

49:46

I mean, the fact that you

49:48

put it out into the world people show

49:50

up and they tell you, I see myself differently. I

49:53

see our history different. I didn't

49:55

know all the answers. Or

49:57

I didn't have the facts as a woman said,

49:59

do you feel that there's

50:02

something you had mentioned earlier

50:04

that this obviously is bigger than

50:06

you, but do you feel that there's something soulfully,

50:09

spiritually happening with

50:12

this that is more dynamic than

50:14

just making the best sellers list and selling books?

50:16

I'm so grateful you

50:19

asked that question. I'm not

50:21

a spiritual person. I'm not a religious

50:24

person. I'm agnostic. And

50:26

I always just say, I I don't believe in God,

50:28

but I believe in the zodiac. But

50:30

I have felt an

50:32

ancestral presence on this work. And

50:34

and when I said this to

50:37

my husband, at me because he's like, you don't

50:39

talk like that. You don't believe

50:42

that. But I I have.

50:44

There have

50:46

been moments for instance, in the very last

50:48

section of the democracy

50:50

essay, it begins with they say our

50:52

people were born on the

50:54

water. And that writing doesn't

50:56

even match the rest of the writing in the

50:58

essay. It it doesn't even go.

51:00

And I was having a particularly

51:02

hard moment in trying to write the

51:04

essay. I was completely overwhelmed. I

51:06

was like, I'm gonna be a failure. I

51:08

just couldn't write, and that mind

51:10

just came to me. And

51:12

I felt The answers have gave that to me. I really did. I felt I

51:14

felt in ways that I can't

51:16

explain because, again, it's not it's not how

51:18

my mind works, and everyone know them.

51:20

I'm I'm

51:22

not that type of person, but I have felt that

51:24

that I'm doing the work that

51:26

is blessed by

51:27

them, that they look

51:30

over me. You say

51:32

in the end, I wanna thank the ancestors

51:34

in the more than thirty million

51:36

descendants of American

51:38

slavery.

51:38

I never forget who this work is for and

51:40

to whom I belong. That's

51:42

right. I love that line.

51:47

We must always hold our heads up

51:49

high because we come from

51:52

and we are a great

51:54

people. Yes.

51:56

Thank you, Nicole, for your unwavering courage,

51:58

for your fearlessness, and being a powerful

52:01

force for positive change in this

52:03

country, and your work.

52:06

Your intellect, your strength is gonna literally,

52:08

I think, change the way people

52:10

see our history. It already

52:13

has done that. Thank

52:16

you.

52:16

Thank you so much. And, you know,

52:18

it's just it's a dream every

52:20

time I I get to talk to

52:22

you and I I just know I I wouldn't

52:25

be possible without you as

52:26

well. So just thank you, and I'm just so

52:28

grateful for your presence in my life. Thank

52:31

you. Sixteen nineteen projects available wherever books

52:34

or so. I think it should be on

52:36

every

52:37

American's shelf. Well, everybody in the

52:39

world, but let's just start with America. How about that? That'd

52:41

be good. That'd be good. That'd be good.

52:43

Alright. Loved it.

52:46

Thank you.

52:47

I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've

52:49

been listening to Super Bowl

52:52

Conversations, The podcast. You can

52:54

follow Super Bowl on

52:56

Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

52:58

If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts

53:00

and subscribe, rate, and

53:03

review this podcast. Join me

53:05

next week for another a super

53:07

soul

53:07

you for listening. From

53:09

Pulitzer Prize winning

53:12

journalist Nicole

53:14

HannahJones, and Academy Award winning director Roger Ross Williams

53:16

comes the sixteen nineteen project.

53:18

A six part documentary series based

53:20

on the groundbreaking New York Times essays

53:24

podcast and award winning book. The series examines the legacy of

53:26

slavery in America and explores how it

53:28

is shaped nearly all aspects of

53:31

our society

53:32

today. From policing to

53:34

music to capitalism and our

53:36

democracy. Watch the sixteen

53:38

nineteen project premiering January

53:40

twenty sixth on Hulu.