Toggle open close The New York Times Magazine published its “1619 Project” in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of the first Africans in the English colony of Virginia. The project is a collection of essays and artwork that argue that the legacy of American slavery can be seen today in areas as disparate as traffic patterns in Atlanta, sugar consumption, health care, incarceration, the racial wealth gap, American capitalism, and reactionary politics. The curator of the entire project is Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer and investigative reporter for the New York Times Magazine and author of the lead essay for the 1619 Project. Her essay garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020 (along with many other awards), and she is the previous recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Peabody Award, George Polk Award, and other awards for journalism.