A review of the book 'The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story' created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine.
The 1619 Project charts a new American origin story, beginning not on 4th July 1776 with the American War of Independence, but in August 1619, when a ship arrived in Virginia bearing a cargo of up to thirty enslaved people from Africa.
Orchestrated by the editors of the New York Times Magazine and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1629 Project weaves together essays, poems and fiction to create a landmark work that reframes our understanding of American history, placing the legacy of slavery at the centre of the national narrative.
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Coming up: A review of the book 'The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story' created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine.
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Before I proceed, a full disclosure: This book was bought with my own money and not been provided to me by the author or publisher.
Little bit about the author:
Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021, into the North Carolina Media Hall of Fame. She was also named a member of the prestigious Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of reporters and editors of color. She holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina and earned her BA in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Let me read a brief description of the book:
QUOTE
The 1619 Project charts a new American origin story, beginning not on 4th July 1776 with the American War of Independence, but in August 1619, when a ship arrived in Virginia bearing a cargo of up to thirty enslaved people from Africa.
Orchestrated by the editors of the New York Times Magazine and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1629 Project weaves together essays, poems and fiction to create a landmark work that reframes our understanding of American history, placing the legacy of slavery at the centre of the national narrative.
UNQUOTE
Some of things I found interesting and revealing in this brilliant book:
1. In the eyes of the law, enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing, and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including those working for (Thomas) Jefferson. They could be worked to death, and often were, to produce exorbitant profits for the white people who owned them.
Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favourite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were slaves─to Britain.
2. The founding mythology, which conveniently omits the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. They feared that liberation would enable an abused people to seek vengeance on their oppressors.
3. Given the choice between parity with Black people─by inviting them into unified unions─and poverty, white workers chose poverty, spoiling the development of a multiracial mass labour movement in America. That decision, wrote W.E.B. Du Bois, “drove such a wedge between white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart from neither sees anything of common interest.”
4. So if Washington often feels broken, that’s because it was built that way. A 2011 study of twenty-three long-standing democracies identified the United States as the only country in the group that had four “veto points” empowered to block legislative action: the President, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Most other democracies in the study had just a single veto point. In those nations, parties govern, pass policies, and get voted in or out. Things happen at the federal level. But the United States government is characterised by political inaction─and that was by design. By creating political structures that weakened the role of the federal government’s ability to regulate slavery, the framers hobbled Washington’s ability to pass legislation on a host of other matters.
5. The propaganda of racial progress took its initial form in the era of slavery. Proponents of the idea held that slavery was justified by the fact that enslavers had improved the lot of the Africans they were enslaving. In the 1660s, prominent English minister Richard Baxter urged American plaints in A Christian Directory to “make it your chief end in buying and using slaves, to win them to Christ, and save their Souls.”
Overall, "The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story" is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the true foundations of the United States. It is a powerful call to action, challenging us to rethink our understanding of history and to recognize the voices and experiences that have been marginalised for too long. Hannah-Jones’s work is not just a contribution to historical scholarship; it is a vital part of the ongoing conversation about race, justice, and identity in America. This book is a necessary stepping stone for a more inclusive and honest dialogue about the nation’s past and future.
I give this book 4.5/5.
Before I finish, I would like to quote what the author has said in the beginning of the book:
QUOTE
I wish now that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.
We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.
UNQUOTE
Apart from the paper versions, the book is also available in Kindle and Audible formats. I have given the respective buy links in the show notes. Please check them out for the latest prices.
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