In 2019, the New York Times Magazine published “The 1619 Project,” a series of essays, poems, and stories whose title referred to the year when the first enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the English colonies in North America. The project, which sought to examine the consequences of slavery on American life and the extensive contributions of Black Americans to American society, was created by Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, and for it, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2020. It featured essays by her and several other acclaimed nonfiction writers, including University of Pennsylvania law professor Dorothy Roberts, Kirkus Prize finalist Matthew Desmond, and Times critic Wesley Morris; it also featured poems and stories by novelists Jesmyn Ward and Jacqueline Woodson, filmmaker Barry Jenkins, and poet Yusef Komunyakaa, among others.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (2021), edited by Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein, expanded the project in book form; it received a Kirkus star and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. “Those readers open to fresh and startling interpretations of history will find this book a comprehensive education,” our reviewer noted, and comprehensive it is. It makes a compelling case that America’s history of slavery is at the root of racist policies that have resulted in the victimization of Black people by police, substandard medical care for Black people, and massive obstacles that keep many Black citizens from achieving the American Dream. The work also engagingly details the civil rights battles that Black people have fought throughout history, and the huge influence of Black Americans on all aspects of American culture. The poems and brief stories, interspersed throughout, are also affecting, but they lack the raw immediacy of the essays and might have been more effective as a separate work. A new streaming documentary series, The 1619 Project, wisely excises the fiction and verse and adds powerful new nonfiction material; it premieres on Hulu on Jan. 26.

Hannah-Jones hosts the six-part series, on which she, Roper, and Oprah Winfrey are producers. It streamlines the project, highlighting six of the book’s 18 essays. They include Hannah-Jones’ own “Democracy,” which makes a convincing case that Black Americans’ battles for the right to vote in the face of oppression are key to making the United States live up to its democratic ideals. In the streaming series, she adds new, riveting interviews with people such as MacArthur Cotton, a Freedom Rider and organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who was tortured by law-enforcement officials for registering Black people to vote in Mississippi in the 1960s. Another episode effectively expands on Roberts’ essay “Race,” which shows how bigots in power created the concept of race to justify depriving Black people of opportunities, while the episode “Music,” based on Morris’ essay, lays out how Black musicians and producers revolutionized popular music worldwide. The episode includes a revelatory interview with Nile Rodgers, who co-wrote Chic’s influential 1978 dance hit, “Le Freak,” and produced key songs for popular artists such as Madonna and David Bowie in the ’80s.

Desmond’s piece, “Capitalism,” inspires an episode that documents the struggles of Black activists to unionize workplaces while also compellingly laying out how slavery fostered a particularly brutal economic system in America. The chilling episode “Fear” uses an essay by university professors Leslie Alexander and Michelle Alexander as a springboard to address the racist underpinnings of violent law-enforcement policies.  And Hannah-Jones’ own “Justice” provides the basis for the series’ final episode, which looks at the concept of reparations, asserting that they may be the only way to truly address seemingly insurmountable financial inequality. Hannah-Jones’ interview with Duke University economics professor William Darity is particularly eye-opening; his work appears in the book, but it’s far more powerful to hear him assert, with very clear evidence, that “the federal government’s policies created the racial wealth gap, and so the federal government has an obligation to take the steps to eliminate the racial wealth gap.”

Those who’ve already read these essays will find plenty of insightful new information here, and those who haven’t may be inspired to find out more about the many topics at hand. Hannah-Jones and company produced an invaluable work of history in The 1619 Project—and this program lives up to its very high standard by offering even more.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.