Last week, award winning investigative reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones visited Emerson to accept the President’s award for civic leadership. Jones is known for writing pieces about modern civil rights issues including modern coverage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the Black Lives Matters movement and the effects of the school desegregation busing programs placed in the 1970s.
At the event, the audience was taken over by Emerson student, many who were there as aspiring journalist of were there for class. Twenty year-old second semester Junior, Savannah WilliamsRadecic attended after her professor for her Social Movement class, Roger House, requested that her class go to the event. By the end of the ceremony, WilliamsRadecic was glad she attended
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Sylvia Spears, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion said “Nicole Hannah Jones is an extraordinary journalist who exemplifies a commitment to the common good.”
Jones is currently working for the New York Times Magazine. Prior to that, she was an investigative reporter for Propublica where she researched how government policy wasn’t sustaining racial equality within schools and housing.
At the presentation, Jones was interviewed by Writing, Literature and Publishing Associate Professor Kimberly McLarin. Jones talks about how passion in a journalist, shouldn’t be a hinderous to a reporter. “It is immensely critical,” said Jones, “That editors to allow journalists to write about the things that they’re best at and that they’re passionate about.”
Jones has spent an extensive amount of time covering segregation and discrimination within housing and schools. She was a featured speaker on a This American Life episode called “House Rules” where a woman talked about her experience in the school busing desegregation program. Jones was also a part of the program when she was a child and feels very passionate about the existence of discrimination in the modern