Faraji Hannah-Jones, the husband of controversial New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, compared his wife to civil-rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday as he defended the couple’s decision to enroll their daughter in struggling public schools—a choice he described as a necessary sacrifice in the fight against racism. His comments came after Nikole acknowledged that their daughter had been “cheated” by the decision.
Faraji, 50, rejected claims that he and his wife, the creator of The 1619 Project, had failed as parents. Their daughter reportedly entered high school significantly behind her classmates, and Nikole expressed regret over the decision in a lengthy Times Magazine essay published Sunday.
“When history looks back on this, she’s going to be one of our civil-rights leaders,” Faraji told The Post outside the couple’s home, valued at more than $1.5 million, in Brooklyn’s trendy Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. He was referring to his wife, who is also 50.
“She’s going to be one of the very individuals who stood up,” he said.
“You have to be in it, and it requires risk. Martin Luther King, James Baldwin and Ruby Bridges—all of it required them to be involved, and as a result, things happen,” Faraji said.
“There are wins and losses. So, when you look at it from that perspective, there were no mistakes made. It’s necessary work,” he added.
Great leaders, Faraji argued, are rarely celebrated while they are taking controversial stands. “It’s never at the present, the most popular time,” he said. “No one said, ‘You know, Muhammad Ali, he’s a great man now.’ Back then, he was an enemy of the state.”
“Martin Luther King is a great man now, but he was an enemy of the state,” he continued.
The couple enrolled their daughter in Brooklyn public elementary and middle schools despite having the means to pursue some of the city’s most selective educational options. By the time she reached high school, the now-16-year-old was reportedly struggling with reading, writing and basic mathematics.
Nikole wrote that her daughter understood the consequences of the decision and was “boiling” with anger over what she viewed as her parents’ choice to “sacrifice” her education.
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The couple said they made the decision because they believed their professional connections and social standing could help strengthen underperforming schools.
Nikole is the journalist behind The 1619 Project, a controversial reframing of American history that places slavery and its legacy at the center of the nation’s story.
Faraji said Monday that responsibility for the educational shortcomings rested not with him or his wife, but with the institutions themselves. “Irresponsibility is not on the parents,” he said. “The irresponsibility is on the institutions that never integrated their schools to begin with.”
He dismissed critics as people who, in his view, did not understand the complexity of racism.
“Nikole covered schools for two decades. We knew exactly what we were getting into when we did this. We knew exactly,” he said.
Faraji also insisted that neither he nor his wife regretted the choice, despite Nikole’s admission in her essay: “I feel that I failed both my values and my child.”
“We don’t regret the choice. I think as she gets older, I think she will appreciate it,” he said of their daughter. “We knew that my daughter would be fine because she has parents who know how to advocate and intervene on her behalf.”
“In terms of us being bad parents, get the f–k out of here. Bad parents? Please. I raised an extraordinary daughter who is going to do extraordinary things,” he said.
Faraji, who has been with Nikole since they were both 23, portrayed his wife as the central hero of the story.
“I think she’s one of the greatest writers of our time,” he said. “She’s a very important piece to our American story.”