[11] In 1995, in response to an article published in the Notre Dame student newspaper that called American Indians "savages", Hannah-Jones replied with a letter to the editor titled "Modern Savagery.

[16] In 2003, Hannah-Jones began her career covering education, which included the predominantly African-American Durham Public Schools, for the Raleigh News & Observer, a position she held for three years.

[18][19][20] In 2011, she joined the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which is based in New York City, where she covered civil rights and continued research she had started in Oregon on redlining and in-depth investigative reporting on the lack of enforcement of the Fair Housing Act for minorities.

[25] Hannah-Jones has written about topics such as racial segregation, desegregation and resegregation in American schools[26][27] and housing discrimination, and has spoken about these issues on national public radio broadcasts.

"[38] In 2019, Hannah-Jones launched a project to fundamentally change the way slavery in the United States was viewed, timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia.

[40] The ongoing initiative began August 14, 2019, and "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

[42] The award cited her "sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America's story, prompting public conversation about the nation's founding and evolution.

"[43] Her paper was criticized by historians Gordon S. Wood and Leslie M. Harris, specifically for asserting that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.

[55] Outraged, more than 40 Hussman faculty members signed a statement criticizing the board's inaction, noting that the previous two Knight Chairs were given tenure and claiming that UNC "unfairly moves the goal posts" by not offering Hannah-Jones the same.

[68] Historian Leslie M. Harris, who was consulted for the Project, wrote in Politico that she had warned that the idea that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery was inaccurate, and that the Times made avoidable mistakes.

[69] William Simons of the State University of New York at Oneonta, wrote: Unfortunately, the prescription provided by Hannah-Jones in the conclusion to The 1619 Project for overcoming slavery's legacy of racial inequity is more aspirational than analytic.

However, Hannah-Jones's agenda—reparations for descendants of slaves, as well as national health care and other social welfare programs for all Americans—provides no cost analysis, details, or assessment of the political climate.

[70]In June 2020, Hannah-Jones apologized for retweeting a conspiracy theory claiming that fireworks were being set off by "government agents" to dampen the Black Lives Matter movement.

[71][72][73][74] Hannah-Jones questioned the veracity of a 2024 essay in The Atlantic by a former New York Times editor who said he had been chastised by human resources due to eating at Chick-fil-A, given the CEO's position against same-sex marriage.

The Atlantic asserted that the story had been fact-checked and confirmed with multiple Times employees, and journalists Robby Soave, Erik Wemple, and Jonathan Chait also supported the magazine.