Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Association. Pictured above her in New York in December 2021.
Robert Bumsted/AP
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Robert Bumsted/AP
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Association. Pictured above her in New York in December 2021.
Robert Bumsted/AP
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, best known for founding Project 1619said in an interview with a nonprofit news organization that administrative delays have made it impossible for some academic projects to advance the careers of young Black investigative journalists.
Like her told NC Newsline, projects include a summer internship and a journalism program for high school students at Central University of North Carolina. Both are sponsored by Ida B. Wells . Investigative Reporting Associationan organization founded by four Black journalists, including Hannah-Jones, in the spring of 2015.
The Ida B. Wells Association is named after a Black journalist who participated in an active crusade in the late 1800s and early 20slame pants century. It moved its headquarters from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019. Three years later, the school appointed Hannah-Jones to the chair of Journalism at the School of Journalism and Communication. through UNC’s Hussman. But just a month after her April 2021 announcement, she was denied tenure, despite a resume that included a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Pulitzer prize. Reason? Her award-winning work, most famously Project 1619, focuses on America’s history of apartheid. Right-wing activists describe her date was “a degradation of journalistic standards” and enthusiastically campaigned against her.
In the wake of the national controversy, Hannah-Jones, herself a UNC-Chapel Hill alum, announced she would join the Howard University faculty instead. There she helped found the Center for Journalism and Democracy at the prestigious school, the history of the Negro. Meanwhile, the Ida B. Wells Association moved to another HCBU, Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Ga. But funding was slow to arrive, according to NC Newsline.
Over the years, the Ida B. Wells Association has received approximately $3.8 million in grants from charities, including the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the WK Kellogg Foundation. So far, only about half of that money has gone to Morehouse.
The UNC-Chapel communications office wrote in a statement to NPR: “We have completed a transfer of nearly $2.1 million to date. “We are working with Morehouse College and relevant funding agencies on the remaining remittance process.”
No one from the Ida B. Wells Association responded to multiple requests for comment from NPR. According to sources in the NC Newsline article, those involved in the Association believe the process has been unusually slow. When it moved from its original home at the City University of New York to Harvard University, the transfer took a little over a month. However, gift placement has evolved over time, and the document setup and implementation process is complex.
Meanwhile, the Ida B. Wells Association told NC Newsline it was unable to raise the operational funding needed to launch the careers of a group of young journalists of color. There is no mention of this on Ida B. Wells . Association website, doesn’t seem to have been updated in almost a year. And although its Twitter and Facebook accounts are still active, none of its recent posts have mentioned canceling the organization’s programs.
