Ideological Ax-Grinding: The 1619 Project

Nikole Hannah-Jones

The 1619 Project purports to be a historical analysis of how slavery shaped American political, social, and economic institutions. My concern is that it has spawned a high-school curriculum. While I remain all for efforts to address the foundational centrality of slavery and racism to American history, my view of the project is that its displacing of historical understanding with ideology, and thus lacks credibility as historical analysis.

I concede that slavery’s legacy still shapes American life. If used to supplement traditional curricula, I have no problem with the project at all. What I take issue with specifically is Ms. Hannah-Jones’s essay recounting black Americans’ struggle to “make democracy real,” and sociologist Matthew Desmond’s essay linking the crueler aspects of American capitalism to the labor practices that arose under slavery, thoroughly refuted by Professor Oakes.

Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay says 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” as abolitionist sentiment began rising in Britain.

From abolitionism to the civil-rights movement, civil rights activists have employed the rhetoric and documents of the founding era to establish their claims to equal citizenship as in agreement with American tradition. Colonial America’s rising anti-slavery movement was conspicuous and had a weighty influence on the Revolution, a radical break from millennia in which human slavery was accepted around the world.  Teaching students that the Revolution was fought in part to secure slavery promotes a basic misunderstanding not only of what the Revolution was about, but what America has stood for since 1776. The Revolution was sparked in New England, where prewar anti-slavery sentiment was strongest, and the Revolution gave impetus to abolitionism in the North.

Hannah-Jones contention that black Americans have fought for their freedom “largely alone” is a half-truth at best. Consider anti-slavery Quakers organizing boycotts of goods produced through slave labor, abolitionists springing fugitive slaves from prison, and union workers participating in the March on Washington. It would appear that the struggle for black freedom has been to some degree interracial, eventually affecting the fight for women's rights. The problem history teachers are presented with at present is that much of American history has been written by authors offering ideological claims in place of rigorous historical analysis. It is the task of the professional historian to discern which claims are ideological, and which ones are objective.