The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project is an ongoing project developed by The New York Times Magazine in 2019 with the goal of "refram[ing] American history" around slavery and the contributions of African Americans. The project was timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony in 1619, and suggests that this date represents the "nation's birth year". It is an interactive project directed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for The New York Times, with contributions by the newspaper's writers, including essays on the history of different aspects of contemporary American life which the authors believe have "roots in slavery and its aftermath."[1] It also includes poems, short fiction, and a photo essay.[2] Originally conceived as a special issue for August 20, 2019, it was soon turned into a full-fledged project, including a special broadsheet section in the newspaper, live events, and a multi-episode podcast series.[3]

"The 1619 Project"
The 1619 Project logo
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Long-form journalism
PublisherThe New York Times
Publication date2019

The project has sparked criticism and debate among prominent historians and political commentators.[4][5] In a letter published in The New York Times in December 2019, historians Gordon S. Wood, James M. McPherson, Sean Wilentz, Victoria Bynum and James Oakes expressed "strong reservations" about the project and requested factual corrections, accusing the project of putting ideology before historical understanding. In response, Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, defended the accuracy of the 1619 Project and declined to issue corrections.[6] In March 2020, historian Leslie M. Harris, who served as a fact-checker for the 1619 Project, wrote that the authors had ignored her corrections, but that the project was a needed corrective to prevailing historical narratives.[7]

Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her introductory essay to the 1619 Project.[8][9]

Background
Further information: Slavery in the colonial history of the United States

The project addresses "the beginning of American slavery", which it places in the year 1619, a year which has been called historically incorrect. Time Magazine noted that the first slaves arrived in 1526, 93 years prior to the landing in Jamestown.[10] In addition, John Lok, William Towerson, John Hawkins and Elizabeth were involved in slavery.[11]

The 1619 Project was launched in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies and its legacy.[12][13] The first enslaved Africans in the English colonies of mainland North America arrived in August 1619. A ship carrying 20–30 people who had been enslaved by a joint African-Portuguese war[14] on Ndongo in modern Angola, landed at Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia.[12][15]

Project

The project was based on a proposal by Hannah-Jones to dedicate an issue of the magazine to a re-examination of the legacy of slavery in America, at the anniversary of the arrival of the first slaves to Virginia. The plan was to challenge the notion that the history of the United States began in 1776. The initiative quickly grew into a larger project.[15] The project encompasses multiple issues of the magazine, with related materials in multiple other publications of the Times as well as a project curriculum developed in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center, for use in schools.[15] The project employed a panel of historians and had support from the Smithsonian, for fact-checking, research and development.[16] The project was envisioned with the condition that almost all of the contributions would be from African-American contributors, deeming the perspective of black writers an essential element of the story to be told.[17]

August 14 magazine issue

The first edition, which appeared in The New York Times Magazine on August 14, 2019, published in 100 pages with ten essays, a photo essay, and a collection of poems and fiction by an additional 16 writers,[18] included the following works:[13][19]

The essays discuss details of modern American society, such as traffic jams and the American affinity for sugar, and their connections to slavery and segregation.[20] Matthew Desmond's essay shows the way in which slavery has shaped modern capitalism and workplace norms. Jamelle Bouie's essay draws parallels between pro-slavery politics and the modern right-wing politics.[17] Bouie argues that America still has not let go of the assumption that some people inherently deserve more power than others.[21]

Accompanying material and activities

The magazine issue was accompanied by a special section in the Sunday newspaper, in partnership with the Smithsonian, examining the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade, written by Mary Elliott and Jazmine Hughes. Beginning on August 20, a multi-episode audio series titled "1619" was started,[20] published by The Daily, the morning news podcast of the Times.[15] The Sunday sports section had an essay about slavery's impact on professional sports in America: "Is Slavery's Legacy in the Power Dynamics of Sports?".[15][22] The Times plans to take the project to schools, with the 1619 Project Curriculum developed in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center.[23] Hundreds of thousands of extra copies of the magazine issue were printed for distribution to schools, museums and libraries.[12]

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has made available free online lesson plans, is collecting further lesson plans from teachers, and helps arrange for speakers to visit classes.[24] The Center considers most of the lessons usable by all grades from elementary school through college.[25]

Reception

According to Vox, as of August 19, 2019, the project, harshly criticized by some conservatives, had "largely earned praise from academics, journalists and politicians alike".[17] The positive reviews include the analysis by Alexandria Neason for the Columbia Journalism Review,[15] and the review by Ellen McGirt, published in Fortune magazine which declared the project "wide-reaching and collaborative, unflinching, and insightful" and a "dramatic and necessary corrective to the fundamental lie of the American origin story".[19] Andrew Sullivan critiqued the project as an important perspective that needed to be heard, but one presented in a biased way under the guise of objectivity.[26] Other commentators who both lauded and criticised the project include Damon Linkler who called it a "remarkable achievement", but found its treatment of history "sensationalistic, reductionistic, and tendentious",[27] Timothy Sandefur who deemed the project's goal worthy, but observed that the articles persistently went wrong trying to connect everything with slavery,[28] Phillip W. Magness who wrote that the Project provided a distorted economic history borrowed from "bad scholarship" of the New History of Capitalism (NHC),[29] and Rich Lowry who wrote there was much truth and much to learn from in Hannah-Jones' lead essay but it left out unwelcome facts about slavery, smeared the revolution, distorted the Constitution and misrepresented the founding era and Lincoln.[30] The World Socialist Web Site criticized what its editors consider the Times' reactionary, politically motivated "falsification of history" that wrongly centers around racial rather than class conflict.[5][4][31] Marxist political scientist Adolph Reed dismissed the 1619 Project as "the appropriation of the past in support of whatever kind of ‘just-so’ stories about the present are desired."[32]

In February 2020, a rival project called the 1776 Project, published under the aegis of The Washington Examiner, was launched by a number of African-American academics who dispute the narrative of the 1619 Project.[33]

Reaction from historians

Beginning in October 2019, the World Socialist Web Site published a series of interviews with prominent historians critical of the 1619 Project, including Victoria E. Bynum, James M. McPherson, Gordon S. Wood, James Oakes, Richard Carwardine and Clayborne Carson.[5][4][34][35]

In December 2019, five leading American historians, Sean Wilentz, James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum and James Oakes, sent a letter to the Times expressing objections to the framing of the project and accusing the authors of a "displacement of historical understanding by ideology". The letter disputed the claim, made in the Hannah-Jones' introductory essay to the 1619 Project, that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery". The Times published the letter along with a rebuttal from the magazine's editor-in-chief, Jake Silverstein.[6][4] Wood responded in a letter, "I don't know of any colonist who said that they wanted independence in order to preserve their slaves [...] No colonist expressed alarm that the mother country was out to abolish slavery in 1776."[5][36] In an article in The Atlantic, Wilentz responded to Silverstein, writing, "No effort to educate the public in order to advance social justice can afford to dispense with a respect for basic facts", and disputing the factual accuracy of Silverstein's defense of the project.[37]

Also during December 2019, twelve scholars and political scientists specializing in the American Civil War sent a letter to the Times saying that "The 1619 Project offers a historically-limited view of slavery." While agreeing to the importance of examining American slavery, they objected to the portrayal of slavery as a uniquely American phenomenon, to construing slavery as a capitalist venture despite documented anti-capitalist sentiment among many Southern slaveholders, and to presenting out-of-context quotes of a conversation between Abraham Lincoln and "five esteemed free black men". The following month, Times editor Jake Silverstein replied with notes from the research desk, concluding that the scholars had requested the inclusion of additional information, rather than corrections to existing information.[38][39]

In March 2020, historian Leslie M. Harris who was consulted for the Project, wrote in Politico that she had warned that the idea that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery was inaccurate, and that the Times made avoidable mistakes, but that the project was "a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories".[7] Hannah-Jones has also said that she stands by the claim that slavery helped fuel the revolution, though she concedes she might have phrased it too strongly in her essay, in a way that could give readers the impression that the support for slavery was universal.[4][7] On March 11, 2020, Silverstein authored an "update" in the form of a "clarification" on Times' website, correcting Hannah-Jones's essay to state that "protecting slavery was a primary motivation for some of the colonists".[40]

Political reaction

The publication of the project received varied reactions from political figures. Democratic Senator Kamala Harris praised the project, in a tweet, stating "The #1619Project is a powerful and necessary reckoning of our history. We cannot understand and address the problems of today without speaking truth about how we got here."[17] Several high profile conservatives criticized the project. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized the project as "brainwashing" "propaganda", in a tweet,[17] and later wrote an op-ed characterising it as "left-wing propaganda masquerading as 'the truth'".[41] Republican Senator Ted Cruz also equated it with propaganda.[20] President Donald Trump, in an interview on Fox News, said, "I just look at -- I look at school. I watch, I read, look at the stuff. Now they want to change -- 1492, Columbus discovered America. You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that's what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don't even know".[42]

In July 2020, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas proposed the "Saving American History Act of 2020", prohibiting K-12 schools from using federal funds to teach curriculum related to the 1619 project, and make schools that did ineligible for federal professional-development grants. Cotton added that "The 1619 Project is a racially divisive and revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded."[43][39]

Awards

Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the 1619 Project.[8][9]

See also

References
  1. Silverstein, Jake (December 20, 2019). "Why We Published The 1619 Project". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 31, 2020. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
  2. Ferreira, Johanna (August 15, 2019). "The NY Times' 1619 Project Examines the Legacy of Slavery in America". Hip Latina. Archived from the original on August 17, 2019. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
  3. "In '1619' Project, the Times Puts Slavery Front and Center of the American Experience". WNYC. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on August 17, 2019. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
  4. Serwer, Adam (December 23, 2019). "The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on December 24, 2019. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  5. Friedersdorf, Conor (January 6, 2020). "1776 Honors America's Diversity in a Way 1619 Does Not". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on July 16, 2020. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  6. Silverstein, Jake (December 20, 2019). "We Respond to the Historians Who Critiqued The 1619 Project". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 15, 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
  7. Harris, Leslie M. (March 3, 2020). "I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me". Politico. Archived from the original on June 7, 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  8. Barrus, Jeff (May 4, 2020). "Nikole Hannah-Jones Wins Pulitzer Prize for 1619 Project". Pulitzer Center. Archived from the original on May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  9. "Commentary". The Pulitzer Prizes. Columbia University. Archived from the original on May 4, 2020. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  10. Slavery in America Didn't Start in Jamestown in 1619
  11. https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-trade-and-abolition/sites-of-memory/slave-traders-and-plantation-wealth/britain-and-the-slave-trade/
  12. Gyarkye, Lovia (August 18, 2019). "How the 1619 Project Came Together". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 19, 2019. Retrieved August 19, 2019.
  13. "The 1619 Project". The New York Times Magazine. August 14, 2019. Archived from the original on December 26, 2019. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
  14. Painter, Nell Irvin. (2006). Creating Black Americans: African-American history and its meanings, 1619 to the present. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 23-24. ISBN 0-19-513755-8. OCLC 57722517.
  15. Neason, Alexandria (August 15, 2019). "The 1619 Project and the stories we tell about slavery". Archived from the original on August 16, 2019. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
  16. Tharoor, Ishaan (August 20, 2019). "The 1619 Project and the far-right fear of history". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
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  19. McGirt, Ellen (August 14, 2019). "The New York Times Launches the 1619 Project: raceAhead". Archived from the original on August 17, 2019. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
  20. Asmelash, Leah (August 19, 2019). "The New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project takes a hard look at the American paradox of freedom and slavery". CNN. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
  21. Covucci, David (August 19, 2019). "Conservatives are livid the New York Times is writing articles about slavery". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
  22. Kurt Streeter (July 18, 2019). "Is Slavery's Legacy in the Power Dynamics of Sports? - The New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
  23. "New goal for New York Times: 'Reframe' American history, and target Trump, too". Washington Examiner. August 17, 2019. Archived from the original on August 18, 2019. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
  24. "The 1619 Project Curriculum". Pulitzer Center. Archived from the original on May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  25. "Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder". Pulitzer Center. Archived from the original on December 12, 2019. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  26. "The New York Times Has Abandoned Liberalism for Activism". New York Magazine. September 13, 2019. Archived from the original on October 1, 2019. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
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  28. "The Founders Were Flawed. The Nation Is Imperfect. The Constitution Is Still a 'Glorious Liberty Document.'". Reason.com. August 21, 2019. Archived from the original on March 14, 2020. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
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  38. "Twelve Scholars Critique the 1619 Project and the New York Times Magazine Editor Responds". History News Network. January 26, 2020. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
  39. Skurk, Krystina (August 11, 2020). "8 More Big Takedowns Of The 1619 Project For Its One-Year Anniversary". The Federalist. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
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