Nikole Hannah-Jones's Daughter Criticizes Mother's School Choice

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The New York Times's 1619 Project, has faced criticism from her own daughter, Najya, 16, for the author's decision to send her to under-resourced public schools. Hannah-Jones acknowledged in a recent New York Times op-ed that she and her husband chose to send Najya to predominantly Black, low-income schools in Brooklyn, despite having the means to afford elite private institutions.

Hannah-Jones stated her belief that wealthier families attending such schools could bolster them. "I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage," she wrote. However, Najya recounted in a joint interview with "This American Life" that she felt years behind her peers, struggling with basic math and writing by age 12.

Najya confronted her mother, presenting a list of more competitive schools for her remaining high school years. "Every school on there is a school that screens and has hardly no black kids," Hannah-Jones recalled internally, noting her daughter's choices seemed to oppose her life's work. Najya expressed frustration, telling her mother, "You put me on the line to help a school, but it didn’t work." She added, "I didn’t want to feel like I didn’t know anything because I was set back in other schools. I didn’t want to feel like I was dumb."

Hannah-Jones, who rose to prominence for reframing American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans, explained that her decision was informed by her reporting on school integration. She and her husband, tech specialist Faraji, believed sending Najya to a school uniformly avoided by wealthier families might help.

Najya questioned this approach, asking her mother, "Why should I have to suffer with that? Why couldn’t you just benefit kids in another way?" Hannah-Jones responded that Najya had many advantages and that their differing views were acceptable, pointing out that Najya still got into her first-choice high school. Najya countered, "But you could have had me way higher in education."

Hannah-Jones also defended sending her daughter to public schools where most children shared her racial background, highlighting positive experiences like exposure to diverse educators and Black History Month celebrations. However, Najya stated she did not recall much from elementary school, describing it as "just regular. It was fine." She added, "It was just a school that she picked for me. I didn’t really care about it."

Even when realizing in fourth grade that Najya was falling behind, Hannah-Jones and her husband hesitated to move her. They felt conflicted, as other students in the under-resourced school also deserved education and faced greater systemic disadvantages. "We would have these discussions. And we would be like, who are we if the moment it gets really rough, we give up? Then what did we do it for in the first place? And in the end, we just felt we couldn’t abandon the rest of those kids," Hannah-Jones explained.

Ultimately, Hannah-Jones apologized to her daughter, though she maintained her intentions were good. "The stakes were so high for me personally. I feel like the stakes are so high when it comes to the issue of integration and equality that I couldn’t admit to her that, yes, you did bear a cost," she said. "And I don’t know that we made the right choice. I don’t know what the right choice would be."