Faraji Hannah-Jones, the husband of controversial New York Times journalist 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 as an act of resistance against racism — despite his wife acknowledging that their child “got cheated” by the choice.
Faraji, 50, rejected claims that he and his wife, the creator of the 1619 Project, had failed as parents. His comments came after Nikole admitted in a lengthy Times Magazine essay published Sunday that their daughter entered high school significantly behind her classmates, prompting her to reflect on whether she had made the wrong decision.
“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 more than $1.5 million home in Brooklyn’s trendy Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, referring to his wife.
“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, Ruby Bridges — it all required them to be in it, and as a result, things happen.”
“There are wins and losses. So when you look at it from that perspective, there were no mistakes made. It’s necessary work.”
Great leaders, he said, are rarely celebrated while they are actively challenging the status quo. “It’s never at the present, the most populous time,” he said. “No one said, ‘You know, Muhammad Ali, he’s a great man now.’ But 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.”
The couple enrolled their daughter in struggling Brooklyn elementary and middle schools, even though they had the resources to pursue some of the city’s top educational options. By the time she reached high school, their now-16-year-old daughter was reportedly struggling with reading, writing and basic math.
Nikole wrote that her daughter understood the consequences of the decision and was “boiling” with anger that her parents had chosen to “sacrifice” her education.
The couple said they made the choice because they believed their professional connections and social standing could help strengthen schools serving disadvantaged communities.
Nikole is the journalist behind the Times’ controversial 1619 Project, an examination of American history that places slavery and its legacy at the center of the nation’s story.
Faraji said Monday that responsibility for the outcome should not rest with him and his wife. “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, failed to understand the complexity of racism and its impact on public education.
“Nikole covered schools for two decades. We knew exactly what we were getting into when we did this. We knew exactly.”
Faraji also maintained that neither he nor his wife regretted the decision, even though Nikole wrote, “I feel that I failed both my values and my child” in her essay.
“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 added.
Faraji also portrayed his wife, whom he has been with since they were both 23, 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.”
