Hannah-Jones says that reaching classrooms was not on her mind when she conceived of “The 1619 project,” but that schools have become important outlets. Through a partnership with the Pulitzer Center, which has teamed with the Times before, the project has been embraced by dozens of schools and educational centers around the country, from high school history faculty in Baltimore to grade school teachers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to the advocacy group Texas Trailblazers for Equity in Education. The Penguin Random House imprint Kokila is publishing the picture story “Born On the Water,” a collaboration among Hannah-Jones, co-writer Renée Watson and illustrator Nikkolas Smith that Hannah-Jones says she was inspired to work on after readers of the Times magazine asked for something addressed to younger readers. It is a mini-history, with verse and images, that traces centuries of Black lives from their thriving communities in Africa to their forced passage overseas and enslavement to their hard-earned freedom. Those once “brokenhearted, beaten and bruised” became “healers, pastors and activists,” Hannah-Jones and Watson write, “because the people fought/America began to live up to its promise of democracy.”

Jess Lifshitz, who teaches fifth grade literacy in the Chicago suburbs, says that although she was familiar with “The 1619 Project,” she didn’t plan to directly incorporate the work into her classroom because of her students’ age.

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