What is the 1619 Project?
It was a New York Times Magazine special issue last year marking the 400th anniversary of American slavery, in which the Times proposed regarding 1619 as “our nation’s birth year.” In August of that year about 20 slaves from present-day Angola were sold in chains to British colonists in Jamestown, Va. The establishment of slavery in the British colonies, the Times argued, was as formative to U.S. history as the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The new nation was more “slavocracy” than democracy, staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in a Pulitzer Prize– winning opening essay, arguing that the founding ideals of equality and liberty were “a lie.” Other articles in the 1619 Project traced the influence of slavery on modern-day diets, politics, criminal justice, health care, capitalism—even traffic patterns in Atlanta. The issue spawned podcasts and upcoming Oprah Winfrey–backed films and TV shows, and hundreds of thousands of copies were sent to libraries and schools. It quickly became a new front in the culture war: In June, protesters spray-painted “1619” across a toppled statue of George Washington, while President Trump and Fox News frequently deride the project as an attack on America itself.
What are the most controversial claims?
The Times argued that progress toward racial equality is stunted because “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” Hannah-Jones wrote that an American “racial caste system” was put in place before the nation’s founding, and that “one of the primary reasons” colonists declared independence from Britain was “because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” White men like Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration with a black slave waiting on him, were empowered to break from the British Empire because of “dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery,” she wrote. Black Americans, she said, have been largely alone in fighting for their freedoms, and their struggle for equality makes them “this nation’s true Founding Fathers.” These assertions ignited a debate that is still raging a year later.
Why so much controversy?
The 1619 Project argues that the systemic racism that is slavery’s legacy remains deeply rooted in every American institution and is still an ever-present factor in the lives of black Americans. The pessimism in that view has been assailed by critics such as City University of New York historian James Oakes. If racism is in the country’s DNA, Oakes asked, “What can you do? Alter your DNA?” Critics particularly focused on HannahJones’ claim that colonials rebelled partly out of fear England would outlaw slavery,
The 1619 Project in the schools
The Pulitzer Center partnered with the to distribute teaching materials based on the 1619 Project, and more than 4,500 classrooms in all 50 states, from kindergarten to college, have crafted lessons using those resources. School systems in Buffalo; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Wilmington, Del.; and Winston-Salem, N.C. incorporated the project more broadly into their history curriculum. In many districts, discussions of the role of slavery and racism in American history were previously very limited. In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center surveyed 1,700 socialstudies teachers nationwide, and 60 percent of them said their textbooks failed to adequately cover slavery. The SPLC survey showed, for example, that about 92 percent of high school students didn’t even know that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War. “American students are typically taught that slavery came and went, that it’s a relic of our past,” said Mark Schulte, the Pulitzer Center’s Education Director. “The 1619 Project shows its pernicious repercussions.” Project editor Silverstein said it was never intended “to replace all of U.S. history.
It’s being used as supplementary material.”