The 1619 Project

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[[File:The 1619 Project wordmark.jpg|thumb|right|165px|The 1619 Project logo from ''The New York Times'']]
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'''The 1619 Project''' is an in-depth historical work that aims to [[historical revisionism|retrace the origin of the United States]] to the introduction of [[slavery]]. It originated with a special issue of ''[[The New York Times]] Magazine'' published in August 2019, the 400<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the first enslaved black people arriving on what is now U.S. land. Since then, it has been spun off into books and educational curricula, and it has sparked debate among genuinely concerned historians obsessed with academic rigor and disingenuously concerned conservatives obsessed with whitewashing history.

==Overview==
The 1619 Project includes the following media:
* A special issue of ''The New York Times Magazine'' published August 18, 2019<ref>[https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf ''The New York Times Magazine'' dated August 18, 2019] as reprinted by the Pulitzer Center</ref>
* A five-episode podcast<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/column/1619-project 1619: An audio series from The Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery.] ''The New York Times''.</ref>
* ''The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story'', a 2021 companion book that is a collection of essays connecting slavery to various other aspects of American society, law, and culture, ranging from inheritance laws, self-defense laws, traffic infrastructure, and even [[music]].

''New York Times'' editor Jake Silverstein has stated that the goal of the project is to redefine the birth of the U.S. to "the date when the first enslaved [[Africa]]ns arrived in the [[British Empire|English]] [[colonialism|colonies]] that would become the United States — August of 1619."<ref name="recent criticism">[https://web.archive.org/web/20201101065733/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/magazine/criticism-1619-project.html On Recent Criticism of The 1619 Project: A response from our editor.] by Jake Silverstein (Oct. 16, 2020) ''The New York Times'' (archived from November 1, 2020).</ref>

==Critical response==
===Criticism===
Because the 1619 Project has brought to prominence a new angle to U.S. history that until then had seldom been discussed, the project attracted debate and criticism across the political spectrum. Conor Friersdorf in ''The Atlantic'' reported that criticism of "1619" came from both the [[left-wing|left]] (World Socialist Web Site) and [[right-wing|right]] [[Manhattan Institute|''(City Journal)'']].<ref name="1776 honors"/><ref>[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/28/nytr-d28.html The 1619 Project and the falsification of history: An analysis of the New York Times’ reply to five historians] by David North & Eric London (28 December 2019) ''World Socialist Web Site''.</ref><ref>[https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory Preaching a Conspiracy Theory: The 1619 Project offers bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption—not history.] by Allen C. Guelzo (December 8, 2019) ''City Journal''.</ref>

One of the more controversial claims made by the project is that slavery was a primary reason behind the [[American Revolution]]. For World Socialist, historian Gordon Wood disputed the "1619" claim that colonists wanted independence from [[United Kingdom|Britain]] in order to preserve slavery.<ref name="1776 honors">{{cite web|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200716232507/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/inclusive-case-1776-not-1619/604435/|archivedate=July 16, 2020|title=1776 Honors America’s Diversity in a Way 1619 Does Not|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/inclusive-case-1776-not-1619/604435/|work=The Atlantic|date=January 6, 2020|last=Friedersdorf|first=Conor|accessdate=March 12, 2022|url-status=live}}</ref> On the right, ''City Journal'' published an article calling the 1619 Project a "polemic" with an agenda to "tarnish [[capitalism]] by associating it with slavery."<ref name="1776 honors"/>

===The NYT responds===
In the preface to ''The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story'' anthology, project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote:
{{quotebox|The assertions about the role slavery played in the American Revolution shocked many of our readers. But these assertions came directly from academic historians who had been making this argument for decades. Plainly, the historical ideas and arguments in the 1619 Project were not new. We based them on the wealth of scholarship that has redefined the field of American history since at least the 1960s … What seemed to provoke so much ire was that we had breached the wall between academic history and popular understanding…<ref>''The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story''. New York: One World. 2021. ISBN 978-0-593-23057-2. pp. xxv-xxvi.</ref>{{efn|The 'popular understanding' of slavery in the 1950s-1970s was still being promoted in public school textbooks via the [[bullshit|ahistorical]] [[Lost Cause of the South#The mis-education of the Virginia student|Lost Cause of the South]] ideology.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/01/racist-virginia-textbooks-history-youngkin/ Glenn Youngkin’s No-Guilt History of Virginia for Fragile White People] by Dana Milbank (February 1, 2022) ''The Washington Post''.</ref><ref name=simkins>''Virginia: History, Government, Geography'' by Francis B. Simkins, Spotswood H. Jones, and Sidman P. Poole (1964) Scribner. Revised edition.</ref><ref>[https://www.kut.org/education/2016-11-16/what-a-1950s-texas-textbook-can-teach-us-about-todays-textbook-fight Textbook Can Teach Us About Today's Textbook Fight] by Nathan Bernier (November 16, 2016 at 5:52 PM CST) ''KUT''.</ref><ref>[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3212770-The-History-of-Texas-1954-FULL.html ''The History of Texas''] by Emma Mae Brotze & A. E. Lehmberg (1954) Noble and Noble.</ref>}}}}

''NYT'' editor Jake Silverstein responded to claims about The 1619 Project being revisionist history:
{{quotebox|Given the space constraints, “true founding” was a way to summarize the “birth” metaphor that appeared here and there throughout the print edition — such as in a sentence in my editor’s note that read: “The goal of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from ''The New York Times'' that this issue of the magazine inaugurates, is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.”<ref name="recent criticism"/>}}

===Another defense===
Zach Beauchamp, in his 2024 book ''The [[Reactionary]] Spirit'', finds ''patriotism'' more rather than radicalism in ''The 1619 Project'': "...the project's lead essay...is actually an argument for why Black people, despite their long history of oppression, should still take pride in America and its democracy. For Hannah-Jones, the history of Black struggle for equality gives her community an ownership stake in American democracy. [...] What has struck some as a radical Black-nationalist critique of the American state—a root-to-branch effort to overturn the country's founding mythology—is actually an argument for ''loyalty'' to that state and for faith in its democracy. [...] This is the Rawlsian vision of democratic stability at work. Hannah-Jones is a fairly radical Black critic of the American state, but this worldview led her to embrace democracy's core rather than reject them."<ref>Beauchamp, Zack. ''The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World''. New York: Public Affairs, 2024. {{isbn|9781541704411}}. pp. 210-211.</ref>

===Over-the-top reactions===
Predictably, [[conservative]]s reacted harshly to The 1619 Project because rather than promoting their favored [[American exceptionalism]] [[pseudohistory]], it put the historical facts of slavery as being front and center as the root of many aspects of the United States.<ref>''Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future'' by Jason Stanley (2024) One Signal Publishers / Atria. ISBN 9781668056912.</ref>{{rp|169-170,174}} Conservatives who desire a [[jingoistic]] view of American history made some of the more ridiculous, over-the-top reactions, some of which were [[ad hominem]]s. For instance, Erick Erickson accused 1619 Project contributors of "[profiting] from stoking and fueling racial grievances."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/19/20812238/1619-project-slavery-conservatives|title=The New York Times 1619 Project is reshaping the conversation on slavery. Conservatives hate it.|last=Charles|first=J. Brian|work=Vox|date=August 20, 2019|accessdate=March 12, 2022}}</ref>

In July 2020, U.S. Senator [[Tom Cotton]] ([[Republican]] from [[Arkansas]], formerly part of the [[Confederate States of America]]) introduced a bill that would revoke federal funding from [[public schools]] that included the 1619 Project in curricula.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-tom-cotton-bill-prohibit-federal-funding-teaching/story?id=71963986|title=Sen. Tom Cotton bill would prohibit federal funding for teaching The 1619 Project |publisher=ABC News|last=Gehlen|first=Bobby|date=July 24, 2020|accessdate=March 12, 2022}}</ref> Even with a [[Donald Trump|Republican president]] and Senate majority at the time, that bill went nowhere, given that the biggest legislative priorities at the time was combating the [[COVID-19 pandemic]] and the resulting economic [[recession]].

==See also==
* ''[[The 1776 Report]]'' — the pseudohistorical rebuttal
* [[Critical race theory]]
* [[Historical revisionism]]
* [[Lost Cause of the South]]
* [[Texas Board of Education]]

==External links==
*[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html 1619 Project] — official website
*[https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf 1619 Project] — special issue of ''The New York Times Magazine''
*[https://www.nytimes.com/column/1619-project 1619 Project] — podcast series

==Notes==
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==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

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[[Category:Journalism]]
[[Category:Racism]]
[[Category:Slavery]]
[[Category:United States history]]

Categories: Journalism, Racism, Slavery, United States history