Introducing This Year’s '1619' Education Impact Grantees

The Pulitzer Center is excited to introduce the six newest recipients of our 1619 Education Impact Grant. 

These grantees, who form the second cohort of the 1619 Education Impact Grant Program, were all participants in our Summer Incubator, which allowed them to engage in rigorous exploration of The 1619 Project and workshop their project ideas with other education professionals. Through the Summer Incubator, these grantees refined models for engaging their local community with 1619 materials exploring the theme of democracy and equipping community members to make changes that advance democracy in their local context. 

The Summer Incubator has proven to be an invaluable resource for me. It has helped me put my project in a doable context. The readings helped me focus my project, and I gained a greater sense of urgency for this work. The facilitators were knowledgeable and very clear in their delivery. I look forward to these meetings. The participants are so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about this work and their grants. The projects are very different, but I have been able to glean good information  [from each] that will serve my own project.  

Veronica J., Democracy How?!

The 1619 Education Impact grantees represent six states with a wide regional spread. The grantee cohort includes career K-12 educators, college professors, and community program leaders.

Their projects explore a unifying theme of democracy applied to their local context with focuses that include voter disenfranchisement in the upcoming New York mayoral election; the role of Black arts movements in shaping democracy; and the interconnected histories of laws discriminating against Black and Latine populations in the southwestern United States. 

Each project will utilize at least one resource from The 1619 Project to:

1. Improve the awareness and critical thinking of students and/or educators about the legacies of slavery in the contemporary United States, and the contributions of Black Americans to American democracy
2. Explore the role the news media plays in shaping our understanding of both history and democracy
3. Equip students and/or educators to take action and make change that advances democracy within their communities 

Learn more about each grantee project in the slideshow below. Click on the image to advance slides.

2025 Impact Grantees - Slides by Pulitzer Center

The 1619 Education Impact grantees met three times over five weeks this summer and will be implementing their grant projects throughout the fall semester. Grantees voiced both gratitude and excitement for the program in their reflections, feeling confident about the potential for sustained impact in their communities. 

[This program] helped concretize my understanding of the The 1619 Project as an effort to reframe journalism that I can share with my students. This insight [or deepening of an existing idea] has helped me bring a real structure to my project that was lacking. I always knew that the 1619 Project had enough material to help me build an event, but the reframing idea allows me to build a thematic/topical structure tying together all the sessions and learning outcomes.

Ian J., Chaffey College Media Day: Reframing the Story

I appreciated the reading assignments paired with reflection questions; they were very intentional and thought-provoking. I plan to implement similar questions in my class and during the town hall meetings. The Incubator program deepened my understanding of The 1619 Project and prompted me to think about democracy in new ways. I feel more prepared for project implementation by having clear strategies to engage my students with these themes effectively.

Yaisa M., From 1619 To Langston Project

A presentation of grantee projects and impact will take place after implementation is complete. Grantee project models for engaging school communities with themes of American democracy will be shared in the upcoming weeks. 

For more information about the 1619 Education Impact Grant Program, click here, and for information about how you can get involved with programming related to The 1619 Project and other racial justice reporting projects, subscribe to our 1619 Education Newsletter.