Part 1: The 1619 Project and Its Influence
This essay is the first of two in a series on the 1619 Project. This week we’ll look at what the Project is and how it has influenced the discourse of race in recent years. Next week, we’ll dive into the controversy that has surrounded the Project since its publication, including historical, political, pedagogical, and ideological debates on all sides.
The role of history in modern society
When I was in high school, history was just another subject we had to study. Social Studies eventually turned into AP classes, and I joined plenty of my friends in bemoaning the uselessness of so many facts, figures, and events – many of which I’d struggle to recall today.
History isn’t just another subject, though. We study it in school not only to train students to think critically, but to learn where we come from. As a great philosopher once said, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to forever remain a child.”
We grow up when we learn our history because the stories we tell about our past tell us who we are – or at least, they reflect who we think we are. That’s why history is so inextricably linked to identity. It’s also why the teaching and writing of history remain some of the most politicized activities in university and public life.
Who gets to write history? The common adage tells us that it’s “written by the victors,” but in today’s world, tens of thousands of voices contribute regularly to investigating and interpreting our past.
That hasn’t always been the case. For a long time, history, like so many academic endeavors, was the exclusive purview of the elite. Up until the 20th century, most history professors and writers were men. In America, the majority of them were also white and from the middle if not the upper classes of society. Their perspectives on the world – their fundamental beliefs about who and what is responsible for moving humanity forward – invariably bled into their work, creating narratives that privileged the words, deeds, and interactions of “Great Men Like Them.”
With the advent of several new 19th and 20th century “-isms” – e.g. socialism, feminism, nationalism – people naturally started to question who was holding the pen. And what that might mean for the agenda underlying their view of history. Important questions were raised about who writes history, why they write it, and what impact it has on us. Should history always focus on famous names and battles? Why shouldn’t we have social histories that describe our past through the eyes of people who actually lived it? Why shouldn’t we have working class histories, women’s histories, or even just histories written by native citizens instead of foreign colonizers?
These questions led to new projects in academic and public history writing that reframed how we view our past and how we weigh different narratives against one another.
In the second half of the 20th century, all sorts of new fields evolved to meet this challenge. Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies – interdisciplinary areas like these provided a much-needed counter-balance to the Great-Men-And-Battles narrative of history that predominated for the last two millennia in the West.
Viewing history through social, economic, artistic, technological or other cultural lenses wasn’t in itself a new thing, but centering the perspective of marginalized or otherwise suppressed voices was. This change in university-level studies inevitably trickled down into modern popular culture, where history remains a deeply influential factor in creating shared meaning out of the past.
(Consider, for example, the best-selling Alexander Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow that was responsible for inspiring Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton blockbuster hit.)
In the last two decades, history that reflects the demand for inclusive and diverse stories has thrived. The People’s History of the United States was another best-selling volume that sought to retell American history through the eyes of its regular, often forgotten citizens. It led to a small publishing phenomenon that has continued the exercise from different vantage points, so that Americans can now read The Indigenous People’s History of the United States and The African-American and Latinx History of the United States.
These titles have become bestsellers because they respond to a critical need in the market. Americans want to learn their history as it happened to the people that lived it. People want to know who their ancestors were, be they genetic, cultural, or ideological. Narratives that look at history this way do not preclude the writing of other kinds of history (e.g. political, legal, military). Rather, they supplement and dimensionalize them with more accessible perspectives, helping everyone see themselves in the past and define who they want to be in the future.
The 1619 Project: what it is and what it has done
In 2019, the New York Times Magazine launched a project that grew directly out of these trends in history writing. The 1619 Project – which began as a special edition of the magazine and has since evolved into a podcast, book, educational course pack, and Hulu docuseries – set itself an even more specific challenge.
The project sought to (re)tell the history of the United States through the lens of institutional slavery and the Black communities – enslaved or not – who lived its legacy.
This had – to my knowledge – never been done before. No one had looked at slavery as an institution foundational to the course and causality of events in American history. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist who spearheaded the project, felt that Americans needed to expand their knowledge of slavery and critically examine the role it has played in every era.
For many of us, the history of slavery (and Black people) in the United States is generally taught through two critical periods: the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. The colonial, Revolutionary, antebellum, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Depression, New Deal, WWII, and post-Civil Rights eras are rarely analyzed through the lens of the Black experience.
The 1619 Project flips this phenomenon on its head by telling stories of Black contributions to and experiences of politics, healthcare, arts, housing, employment, international trade, and a number of other phenomena that the Project argues stem (partly or entirely) from slavery.
The introductory essay, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, is one of the most memorable pieces in the collection, which immediately altered my perspective on the role Black people have played in the American story.
The argument is explicit in the title of the essay: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.”
Hannah-Jones opens the essay by relating a story about her patriotic father’s habit of flying an American flag in their backyard. Having tacitly learned in school that the American flag belonged first and foremost to the (white) Americans who founded the country, she was embarrassed by her father’s thoughtless devotion to this symbol:
“How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism.”
The essay goes on to argue that the contributions of Black Americans to nation-forming and -building have been “indelible”. Hannah-Jones explains that the Founding Fathers – and the hundreds of politicians who followed in their footsteps – sanctioned the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, while refusing to deliver on its promises of equality, freedom, and individual dignity. According to her piece, it was largely through the activism and vision of Black thinkers and freedom fighters – beginning in the 18th century Abolitionist movement and continuing up to the present day – that the American government was forced to amend its most foundational documents to extend equal rights to everyone.
That’s not to say that white people didn’t play a part in Abolitionism, Reconstruction, desegregation or Civil Rights. Hannah-Jones’ argument is that it was the continued perseverance of people who suffered under inequality that eventually forced the government to make good on its constitutional promises. It’s also not to say that many of the movements that lobbied for equal rights under the law – e.g. Abolitionism and universal suffrage – did not inform and borrow from one another.
Reading this essay helped me see myself and my ancestors in a new light. One that reveals how much Black Americans have shaped their history as much as any other group. Things didn’t just happen to us. We resisted, we lobbied, we rose up, we advocated, we fought, we built, we created – in short, we were instrumental in developing and perfecting the foundations of American civilization. Which is why Hannah-Jones closes the piece by reminding us that the flag does have tremendous symbolic power, especially for Black Americans. It is a reminder of what we have all built – including the gaps and omissions we helped fill in. It may sound like an obvious thing to say in 2023, but if you grow up learning American history and witnessing its legacy in this country, it can be easy to forget how the flag can be seen by everyone as a symbol of empowerment.
Many of the other essays in the collection are equally fascinating, though typically more specialized. One examines the origins of “brutal capitalism” in the economics of plantation slavery. Another looks at the impact of pseudoscientific myths about biological differences between races in American healthcare. There’s one about the cultural appropriation of Black music like jazz and soul, which have influenced so many genres and trace their origins back to the music of enslaved people. And one of the most interesting essays looks at the “barbaric” history of sugar, which continues to saturate our diets today and originally drove demand in slavery markets well beyond abolition in many European countries.
By looking at the histories of healthcare, economics, food, music, education, philosophy, science, politics, and sociology, The 1619 Project has been able to construct a radical set of arguments that opens our eyes to the oft-ignored legacy of slavery in the US. These arguments do not explain everything in American history. But they add a critical voice and perspective.
For the Black community, they also help us see ourselves in the American and international past. They help situate Black contributions, agency, and activism within a much grander narrative of nation-building – a process that did not simply begin in 1776 or achieve perfection shortly thereafter. The covenants designed and signed in that year were only later redeemed through the rectification and revisionism of later generations.
The deeper legacy of the 1619 Project
Inevitably, The 1619 Project became a contentious project from the moment it was published. Because of its focus on slavery – 1619 was the year enslaved Africans first landed in the colony of Virginia – critics on all sides complained that the essays went too far in ascribing causality to this one economic and ideological institution.
But despite the media attention given to these debates, the true impact of the 1619 Project lies in the accessibility of its content. On January 26, Hulu will premiere a docuseries edition of the Project. The book was a bestseller as soon as it was published. And the 1619 team has worked with the Pulitzer Center to provide free educational materials and curricula to schools K-12 – all of which translate the rigorous, complex research in the Project into something palatable to younger minds.
Several school systems are already using these materials. That represents a critical first step in changing how the next generation of Americans sees themselves and their place in history. If even a fraction of students grow up learning about the diverse experiences and contributions of different groups in American history, then the 1619 Project will have achieved a mini-revolution in American identity and cultural discourse.
People will always have debates over what version of history is more or less correct than another. It’s important to remember that history is always a story, written by human beings with biases, agendas, and rhetorical skill. Whether it’s the 1619 Project or Hamilton, we are all responsible for approaching history with a critical (if not outright skeptical) eye.
But I can’t help but feel that the 1619 Project has to be applauded simply for providing a new version – new stories that help us understand history and talk about it with our children. That labor will have tangible effects on the next generation.
This unique, timely, relevant, and rigorous endeavor has reinvented the popular narrative of American history, suppressed so vehemently and for so long in our country. Above all, it has led to an increased engagement with topics that are often ignored, minimized, or forgotten. More voices than ever are now able to hold forth on subjects that are not commonly taught in school.
If that is the 1619 Project’s primary legacy, then it has done us all an important service.
Because in 2023, history is told by the many – not the few. It is consumed, written, and shared by a country more diverse than its founders ever could have imagined. We should be deeply grateful to the creators of the 1619 Project for ensuring everyone can see themselves in their history – and for arming us with the stories to make sure no one ever forgets us again.
Porter Braswell
