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Historians Critique The 1619 Project, and We Respond
New York Times ^ | December 20, 2019 | Victoria Bynum, James M. McPherson, James M. McPherson, Sean Wilentz, and Gordon S. Wood

Posted on 12/21/2019 4:15:10 PM PST by karpov

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 profound, unsettling questions about slavery and the nation’s past and present, as The 1619 Project does, is a praiseworthy and urgent public service. Nevertheless, we are dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.

These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement.

On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false. Some of the other material in the project is distorted, including the claim that “for the most part,” black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “alone.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: 1619; 1619project; 2020election; cancelculture; districtofcolumbia; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; election2020; fakenews; gordonswood; history; jamesmmcpherson; jeffbezos; mediawingofthednc; newyork; newyorkcity; newyorkslimes; newyorktimes; nyslimes; nyslimesfakenews; nyt; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; seanwilentz; slavery; smearmachine; victoriabynum; washingtoncompost; washingtonpost

1 posted on 12/21/2019 4:15:10 PM PST by karpov
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To: karpov

Progressives have no problem with slavery. They came up with all kinds of excuses for the Gulag. In fact they reinstituted slavery in the Morgenthau Plan and the Yalta Agreement.


2 posted on 12/21/2019 4:23:52 PM PST by Vehmgericht
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To: karpov

Any mention of the Arabs who sold slaves back in the day? Or of Arabs who are selling slaves today?


3 posted on 12/21/2019 4:24:22 PM PST by abclily
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To: karpov

The Lies of the New York Times’ 1619 Project continue to be spread by liberals.

A few months ago, I started posting this little historical exercise about Slavery in pre America:

Slavery was, not yet a reality, even in any British Royal American Colonies by 1619.

1619: The year, the first Endentured Africans, not slaves, were brought to Jamestown, is drilled into students’ memories, but overemphasizing this date distorts history!

1619: First Africans:

In August 1619 “20/odd Negroes” arrived on the Dutch Man-of-War ship at Jamestown colony. This is the earliest record of Black people in colonial America.[38] These colonists were freemen and indentured servants.[39][40][41][42] At this time the slave trade between Africa and the English colonies had not yet been established.

Records from 1623 and 1624 listed the African inhabitants of the colony as servants, not slaves.

In the case of William Tucker, the first Black person born in the colonies, freedom was his birthright.[43] He was son of “Antony and Isabell”, a married couple from Angola who worked as indentured servants for Captain William Tucker whom he was named after.

Yet, court records show that at least one African had been declared a slave by 1640; John Punch. He was an indentured servant who ran away along with two White indentured servants and he was sentenced by the governing council to lifelong servitude. This action is what officially marked the institution of slavery in Jamestown and the future United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jamestown,_Virginia_(1607–99)#1619:_First_Africans

Jamestown was not an American colony nor even a British Colony at that time, 1619.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/misguided-focus-1619-beginning-slavery-us-damages-our-understanding-american-history-180964873/#rw41X6dSPyUlLd4m.99

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

Before going to the link above, everyone, ask yourself a simple question:

In what year did the former British/American Colonies, become America/the USA and recognized by the world powers as America.

Hint, It was not in 1619.

It was 1783! America’s independence was recognized by Britain in 1783.

The Emancipation Proclamation was in 1863, 80 years after we became a recognized country.

This year,2019, will make freedom from Slavery/1863, for 156 years in America, the USA. Thanks to the The Emancipation Proclamation being declared in 1863.

The US had legal slavery for 80 years! Liberal liars scream “400 years” of slavery, and it is a complete lie.

At this point, blacks in today’s America, have been free for much longer than their ancestors were slaves! (nearly twice as long).

*How many union soldiers died to free the Slaves: - Quora:
https://www.quora.com/How-many-union-soldiers-died

*Approximately 110,000 Union Soldiers died due to battle-related causes during the Civil War. Around 250,000 died of disease. Yes, you were more likely to die of illness later than on the battlefield. The deadliest battle for both sides was the infamous Battle of Gettysburg, totaling more than 50,000 casualties.

At least 360,000 Union soldiers died from battle causes or illnesses linked to their service in the Civil War. More suffered from physical and mental wounds for most of their lives post Civil War.

Women born just before, during and after the Civil War in the battleground states often died in their 20’s to 30’s.
My Dad’s mother and one of her sisters died in their late 20’s. Women in their families before and decades after the civil war lived into their late 70’s to 80’s.

Lincoln: The Founders did not make America racist or slaver. They inherited it that way!

PGA Weblog ^
Posted on 9/2/2019, 4:35:14 PM by ProgressingAmerica

Abraham Lincoln:

Judge Douglas asks you, “Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made it forever?” In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.

When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood.

More than that: when the fathers of the Government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it?

The Founding Fathers could not undo in just a few short years what the King spent over a century doing.

Because of the false teachings of progressivism, it has become one of the greatest of ironies that the “Great Emancipator” was also one of the most ardent defenders of the Founding Fathers - specifically on the topic of slavery.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3776122/posts

Please read my tagline for reality.


4 posted on 12/21/2019 4:30:34 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Lincoln: "The Founders did not make America racist or slaver. They inherited it, that way!")
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To: karpov

“...the enduring centrality of slavery and racism to our history...”

IT’S OVER AND DONE WITH. TRILLIONS IN REPARATIONS, PAID WAY BEYOND FULL. MOVE ON, MORONS!


5 posted on 12/21/2019 4:45:15 PM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: karpov

It has been 154 years since there were any slaves in this country. The only reason for this “1619” BS is to keep blacks stirred up and voting Democrat. No other reason. None.


6 posted on 12/21/2019 4:48:30 PM PST by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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To: karpov
So much BS. The 1619 Project, and this response, are just continuing confirmation that my decision to abandon the Times after 50 years of reading virtually every page was a good one.

We are journalists, trained to look at current events and situations and ask the question: Why is this the way it is?

The facts that, to take just a few examples, black men are nearly six times as likely to wind up in prison as white men

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.

No need for the Times editors to come up with a statistic that eliminates fatherless black men and ask themselves whether policies and politicians they have championed have led to the dramatic rise in the percentage of black men who never knew their fathers since I first picked up a Times.

ML/NJ

7 posted on 12/21/2019 4:51:01 PM PST by ml/nj
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To: bk1000

Actually not correct completely. Slavery still existed in the Indian Territory until 1867.


8 posted on 12/21/2019 4:59:19 PM PST by attiladhun2
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To: karpov

“..that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement.”

I think I see a fly in the academic ointment. So historic facts must be supplicant to race whores. Got it.


9 posted on 12/21/2019 4:59:34 PM PST by lastchance (Credo.)
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To: karpov

10 posted on 12/21/2019 5:02:48 PM PST by Chode (Send bachelors and come heavily armed.)
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To: karpov
It seems Glenn Beck--remember him?--has signed on to the "1619 project."
11 posted on 12/21/2019 5:40:46 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: karpov
Why the NYT Must Die

NY Times is the enemy of your free speech

Pulitzer-Winning Lies (NY Times)

12 posted on 12/21/2019 5:48:13 PM PST by T Ruth (Mohammedanism shall be destroyed.)
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To: Grampa Dave

The Emancipation Proclamation was in 1863, 80 years after we became a recognized country.


But the Emancipation Proclamation only effected slaves in territories not under Union control in January of 1863. Lincoln could justify it as a war measure against states and territories under Confederate control. He had no Constitutional authority to free slaves in areas not in rebellion against the US government. The Proclamation goes into details as to which counties in Tennessee and Louisiana are exempt (i.e. those areas under Union control).

It wasn’t until the passage of the 13th Amendment that the Federal Government acquired Constitutional authority to ban slavery. States were always free to do so and most slave states that remained in the Union had freed their slaves before its ratification. The 13th Amendment actually freed very few slaves, but that is what it is remembered for.


13 posted on 12/21/2019 5:48:46 PM PST by hanamizu
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To: Grampa Dave; ml/nj

This 1619 stuff is toxic BS.

Whenever I hear about the ongoing effort to discredit our founders, I am reminded of the same thing the Russians are doing in Lithuania today. I was just visiting Lithuania. There, the Russians have initiated a misinformation campaign to frame Lithuanian freedom fighters as Nazi collaborators and sympathizers. Their basis is that opposing communism is the same as being a Nazi just because they had different sides in the war. Those Russians are evil to this day. Here’s a local story...

https://lithuaniatribune.com/lithuanian-freedom-fighters-in-russian-propaganda-why-does-the-kremlin-care/


14 posted on 12/21/2019 5:55:27 PM PST by Dr. Pritchett
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To: Dr. Pritchett

“This 1619 stuff is toxic BS.”

Yes it is.


15 posted on 12/21/2019 6:08:50 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Lincoln: "The Founders did not make America racist or slaver. They inherited it, that way!")
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To: Dr. Pritchett

“This 1619 stuff is toxic BS.”

Yes it is.


16 posted on 12/21/2019 6:10:09 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Lincoln: "The Founders did not make America racist or slaver. They inherited it, that way!")
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To: karpov

This just makes the nyt even more irrelevant, if that is possible. Rolling Stone has more credibility than the nyt. That’s not saying much.


17 posted on 12/21/2019 7:04:19 PM PST by PhiloBedo (You gotta roll with the punches, and get with what's real.)
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Bookmark


18 posted on 12/21/2019 9:59:55 PM PST by BunnySlippers (I love BULL MARKETS!)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
Raising profound, unsettling questions about slavery and the nation’s past and present, as The 1619 Project does, is a praiseworthy and urgent public service. Nevertheless, we are dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it. These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement. On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true.
IOW, bigots and racists who are the NY Slimes got caught lying again, and they regret that.

19 posted on 12/21/2019 11:33:03 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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