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The World Socialist Website published another interview with a historian who takes issue with the NY Times’ 1619 Project. Oxford historian Richard Carwardine is the author of a book on Lincoln and an expert on the Civil War. Like the other historians the WSWS has interviewed, Carwardine found the 1619 Project troubling and ultimately “wrong” in some ways: [WSWS] Let me begin by asking you your reaction to the 1619 Project’s lead essay, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, upon reading it. [Carwardine] As well as the essay I have read your interviews with James McPherson and James Oakes. I share their sense...

We write as historians to express our strong reservations about important aspects of The 1619 Project. The project is intended to offer a new version of American history in which slavery and white supremacy become the dominant organizing themes. The Times has announced ambitious plans to make the project available to schools in the form of curriculums and related instructional material. We applaud all efforts to address the enduring centrality of slavery and racism to our history. Some of us have devoted our entire professional lives to those efforts, and all of us have worked hard to advance them. Raising...

‘So wrong in so many ways” is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party. The “1619 Project” was launched in August with a 100-page spread in the Times’s Sunday magazine. It intends to “reframe...

... Historians, journalists, and politicians frequently accuse one another of twisting history to advance political agendas—and the accused parties always deny the charge. By contrast, the 1619 Project’s curriculum openly encourages such historical revisionism. Its “reading guide” aims to ensure that students don’t miss core partisan talking points. Jamelle Bouie’s “Undemocratic Democracy,” for example, an essay that draws a line from John Calhoun’s nullification philosophy to Eric Cantor’s hardball budget-negotiation tactics, asks: “How do nineteenth-century U.S. political movements aimed at maintaining the right to enslave people manifest in contemporary political parties?” Students must not miss the point that everything that...

Did I return from vacation to an alternate 2019? Did Biff actually succeed with the DeLorean after all? Of all the strange outcomes to pop up in this version of the universe, “RNC endorses World Socialist Website’s credibility” was somewhere around the millionth rank of possibilities. “And they’d be correct” ranked around the billionth mark. Earlier today, RNC spokesperson Liz Harrington issued the strange-yet-true endorsement of World Socialist Website’s deep dive into the integrity of the New York Times — and especially its “1619 Project” fantasy that might get projected into schools around the country: Elizabeth Harrington ✔ @LizRNC The...

Top Historians Slam New York Times ‘1619 Project’ As It Infiltrates Public School Curriculum Multiple historians slammed New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” calling the reframing of history false and disturbing, as others are pushing for it to continue being added into public school curriculum. The “1619 Project” is made up of multiple stories and poems about racism and slavery. It suggests America’s “true founding” was when the first slaves arrived in 1619 and “aims to reframe the country’s history.” Written by journalists and opinion writers, the project has already received criticism from many conservatives. Historian and Brown University professor...

Q. What was your initial reaction to the 1619 Project? A. Well, I didn’t know anything about it until I got my Sunday paper, with the magazine section entirely devoted to the 1619 Project. Because this is a subject I’ve long been interested in I sat down and started to read some of the essays. I’d say that, almost from the outset, I was disturbed by what seemed like a very unbalanced, one-sided account, which lacked context and perspective on the complexity of slavery, which was clearly, obviously, not an exclusively American institution, but existed throughout history. And slavery in...

See the Lincoln-Douglas debate #6. Stephen Douglas: We then adopted a free State Constitution, as we had a right to do. In this State we have declared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we have also declared that he shall not be a slave. We had a right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as good a right to adopt the other policy. I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter...

The New York Times “1619 Project” is being lauded by the media and many Democrats for what they believe is a long overdue discovery of the hidden truth of America -- that it was founded on white racism and the enslavement of blacks, and that even today the belief in white racial supremacy is so endemic to America that it’s a part of our national DNA. The Project will likely be used to advance policies in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country that purport to remedy this alleged injustice. Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Cal.) has already...

The propaganda that progressives employ is in full bloom, now that they've spent the last 120 years dumbing us down through government controlled grade schools. One of the favored propaganda devices that they use is that of Samuel Johnson, a well known British author at the time. Johnson examined some of what he heard coming from the Continental Congress and among other observations, asked this question: We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally...

In his 1861 "Cornerstone Speech", Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens said the following: But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock...

There is an interesting line in the 1619 Project that many would have perhaps glossed over because they have heard it so many times. It is this: The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that "all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. No, no, don't gloss past this. Stop right...

The New York Times has published a series of essays about slavery, race, and American politics under the heading “1619 Project.” These essays cover an enormous amount of terrain: music, constitutional theory, economics, management, ethnic identity, and more.Many conservatives responded negatively, which at first perplexed me. Slavery was a huge part of American history and has affected every facet of our society. A collection of articles outlining this history seems as good a topic as any to write about.But zoomed out from the mostly mundane minutiae of individual articles — in the absence of slavery and thus without as...

The New York Times officially announced its new 1619 Project to “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.” Constantly now, Americans are called upon to reflect on European villains and indigenous victims. However, the story of European civilization reaching the North American continent did not begin with the first arrival of slave ships at Jamestown in 1619.Let’s take a brief recess from the 1619 Project to explore another project....

As the 2020 Democratic candidates campaign to secure support from black Americans — a voter segment that will play a crucial rule in choosing the party’s next nominee — reparations for the descendants of enslaved men and women has emerged as something of a litmus test. The big picture: Many of the candidate have voiced their support for some form of reparations to redress the legacies of slavery and discrimination, but not all are embracing the issue in the traditional sense (direct compensation).

Senator Christopher Dodd, who has decided not to seek reelection in Connecticut due to low poll scores and involvement in a number of questionable financial scandals has introduced his “Livable Communities Act” (S-1619). This bill, according to Lamb, will establish two new bureaucracies: “The Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities” within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the “Interagency Council on Sustainable Communities.”