Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and architect of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, has long been a polarizing figure, drawing sustained political criticism — particularly from conservatives — for her work reframing U.S. history through the lens of slavery and its legacy.
That scrutiny resurfaced following her recent New York Times obituary of Assata Olugbala Shakur, a woman also known as Joanne Chesimard and born JoAnne Deborah Byron, who died in Cuba earlier this year.
Shakur was a prominent Black Liberation Army activist and former member of the Black Panther Party. Convicted in 1977 of murdering New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster during a 1973 traffic stop, she escaped from prison in 1979 and later received political asylum in Cuba, where she lived for decades as a fugitive. Shakur remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list until her death. She consistently maintained her conviction was unjust, arguing it was based on insufficient or flawed evidence.
Hannah-Jones’ obituary portrayed Shakur as having “died free” and framed her years as a fugitive as a period of clandestine protection within the United States, likened to a modern-day Underground Railroad, before her eventual escape to Cuba. The piece drew parallels to historical figures such as Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner and described Shakur as a political prisoner granted asylum by the Castro government.
Critics, however, argue that the obituary fell woefully short of rigorous investigative journalism. They contend it sanitized the Black Liberation Army’s history by characterizing bombings, robberies, and killings — acts the group openly claimed — as mere allegations. Critics also pointed to Hannah-Jones’ earlier writing on Shakur’s autobiography, which they say omitted Shakur’s own admissions of later criminal activity.
The Washington Free Beacon noted that The New York Times had already published a detailed obituary of Shakur by Clyde Haberman shortly after her death in Havana in September 2025. That earlier piece provided a more comprehensive account of Shakur’s life, criminal convictions, political activism, and fugitive status, raising questions about why the paper later ran a second obituary that many say did not meet the same reporting standard.
The Beacon continues:
Hannah-Jones doesn’t come straight out and assert that her subject was innocent, yet she certainly leaves readers with plenty of doubt. She writes, “In 1977, an all-white jury found her guilty of murdering a New Jersey state trooper who died in a shootout after a car that Shakur and her colleagues were riding in was stopped by the police. Officers later claimed Shakur fired the first shot. Shakur, who was shot twice, said her hands were in the air and she didn’t shoot anyone.”
The Times tells you the name of the murderer (and, later, the name of her child) but doesn’t mention the name of the murdered state trooper. He was Werner Foerster, 34, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran who had a wife, Rosa Charlotte Heider Foerster, and a son, Eric, and a vegetable garden.
The Times tells you that the jury was “all white” but it doesn’t tell you the race of the person who was president in 2013 when the U.S government added Joanne Chesimard to the list of most wanted terrorists. That was President Barack Obama. The Times doesn’t tell you the name of the FBI special agent in charge in Newark who put Chesimard on that list. He is Aaron Ford, who was quoted in a 2013 press release saying, “Joanne Chesimard is a domestic terrorist who murdered a law enforcement officer execution-style.” If the Times is going to say the race of the people in the law enforcement system or the government is relevant, it seems like a double standard to mention the jurors but not the president or the FBI official.
Clyde Haberman’s September 2025 obituary of the same person for the Times is far better journalism than Nikole Hannah-Jones’s attempt, three months later, at the same job. One wonders how many different obituaries of this woman Times readers need, or why bother publishing a worse one three months after a perfectly adequate one? Haberman included not only the name of the murdered trooper but the name of another, James Harper, who was wounded. Other highlights from Haberman’s account that are absent from Hannah-Jones’s: Chesimard’s 1987 autobiography referred to the police as “pigs.” And “she became a Muslim named Assata Olugbala Shakur (Assata derived from an Arabic name meaning ‘she who struggles,’ Olugbala from a Yoruba word for ‘savior’ and Shakur from the Arabic ‘thankful one’).”
Given Hannah-Jones’ prominence, resources, and influence, critics argue that if she believed Shakur was wrongfully convicted, a sustained investigative effort — such as examining trial records, forensic evidence, or potential legal remedies — would have been a more substantive contribution. They point to examples where investigative journalism and podcasts with far fewer resources, including Serial, In the Dark, and work tied to the Georgia Innocence Project, played roles in exonerations or sentence reversals.
Instead, critics say, Hannah-Jones offered a sympathetic narrative that advanced political interpretation rather than new factual inquiry — an approach that continues to fuel debate over the role of advocacy and accountability in contemporary journalism.
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Glad those terrorists are dead!