Will the real 1619 Please Stand Up?

Mike Strong

 

When I first started looking at Nikole Hannah-Jones' New York Times 1619 Project I assumed this would be a quick, affirmative look and book review.

As I started the first stage (fact checking and checking for other's articles on this) things started to fall apart for me and I began wondering what the deal was.

Anyway, this has been a long, very long journey so far with this and I've learned more history than I ever intended ranging from the age of exploration (so called) through the Civil War.

I wound up wondering how the vaunted researchers of the New York Times could possibly have allowed this to go through. After all, they have the reputation of their publication on the line.

The article by Leslie M. Harris, who was asked for her input before the magazine version came out, is revealing.

Also revealing is that the New York Times never once acknowledges (not even at "not to be confused with") "Project 1619, Inc." which had its origin in 1985, formalized first in 1994 and was buried on Google search once the New York Times project published. Calvin Pearson (www.Project1619.org) has taken pains to note that Nikole Hannah Jones has nothing to do with them and that they are tired of being blamed for the mistakes of the New York Times project, which wasn't even pitched until January 2019. Pearson also feels they ripped off the name of his project, just reversing the words in the title. That one is hard to be sure about. Could well be coincidence. Still, you would think some acknowledgement would have been made by now. Seems a bit rude.

This set of PDF files is offered as a presentation companion or even a reference to the topic.

Thank you,
Mike Strong

 

PDF Files

Overal PDF version of my collected exerpts in Word in Outline format - 1.5 mb

1st Continental Congress and the reasons for the Revolution - 920kb

The first Africans brought to Virginia were an accident of piracy - 2.1 mb

The dishonesty of the project is shown by its "coverage" of Bacon's Rebellion - 334 kb

References to full text references (Parts 1 - 11) - 8.8 mb

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Web Link to a set of articles on the WSWS (World Socialist Web Site) detailing problems with the New York Times' project and with Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Index page to a well-spoken collection of articles: https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/1619
From the index page:

The Times wrote that its project intended to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are." It included not only a special magazine edition that was freely distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies to schools and museums nationally, but a proposed teaching curriculum for teachers to use in their classrooms.

Despite the pretense of establishing the United States' "true" foundation, the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history. It presents and interprets American history entirely through the prism of race and racial conflict.

The World Socialist Web Site published detailed refutations of the numerous falsifications contained in the Times project, and interviewed leading historians of the United States.