Founder of Error-Ridden ‘1619 Project’ Slams Lack of Fact Checking in Cotton Op-Ed

"1619 Project" founder Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose seminal essay was updated to address factual errors, said Sunday that a New York Times-commissioned op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) calling for the United States military to quell riots did not undergo appropriate fact checking.

"Senator Cotton certainly has the right to write and say whatever he wants in this country, but we as a news organization should not be running something that is offering misinformation to the public unchecked," Hannah-Jones said on CNN's media-affairs show Reliable Sources. "Yes, we do absolutely believe that his views should be aired … but that's a different thing altogether than simply allowing someone to say things that are not true."

Hannah-Jones said Cotton's op-ed did not go through "the normal fact-checking process that anyone making such claims should go through."

The Times, after initially defending its publication, said Cotton's article was not properly edited and should not have been printed. It said Cotton's claims about the role of the left-wing radical group antifa in recent unrest and the level of recent violence against police were unsubstantiated. It also said Cotton's tone was "needlessly harsh."

Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her initiative examining the legacy of slavery in American history, but the "1619 Project" has come under fire for multiple inaccuracies.

Despite the objections of historians, Hannah-Jones has stood by her assertion that American revolutionaries were motivated primarily by a desire to defend the institution of slavery, a claim that was ultimately subject to a lengthy clarification. One historian who helped fact-check the "1619 Project" said the Times ignored her objections about it.

In the seven months between the article’s publication and the Times’s clarification, five prominent historians demanded that the paper retract "all the errors and distortions" it contained, a move the Times has resisted.

Hannah-Jones was one of dozens of Times staffers who expressed fury last week over the publication of Cotton's essay, writing in a tweet that she was "deeply ashamed" of her employer.

The Bible, Slavery, and America’s Founders

Excerpt: Slavery is a product of the fall of man and has existed in the world since that time. Slavery was not a part of God’s original created order, and as God’s created order has gradually been re-established since the time of Christ, slavery has gradually been eliminated. Christian nations (those based upon Biblical principles) have led the way in the abolition of slavery. America was at the forefront of this fight. After independence, great steps were taken down the path of ending slavery – probably more than had been done by any other nation up until that time in history (though certainly more could have been done). Many who had settled in America had already been moving toward these ends. Unfortunately, the generations following the Founders did not continue to move forward in a united fashion. A great conflict was the outcome of this failure.

1619 Project?

Thomas Jefferson included strong anti-slavery trade language in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but other delegates removed it.

Sorry, the United States of Amercia became a nation with the signing of the Constitution in 1787.

Slavery existed in the US for 78 years.

What other country worked at an finally ended slavery over such a short timespan?

They need to start looking at Spain, Portugal, and other European countries, rather than the US.

In 1794 the US banned American ships from participating in the slave trade and the exporting of slaves from the US by foreign ships.

In 1800 the US banned its citizens from investment and employment in the slave trade.

In 1806 In a message to Congress, Thomas Jefferson calls for criminalizing the international slave trade, asking Congress to “withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights … which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe.”

In 1808 in Michigan Judge Augustus Woodward denies the return of two slaves owned by a man in Windsor, Upper Canada. Woodward declares that any man “coming into this Territory is by law of the land a freeman.”

The slave trade was abolished by Great Britain in 1807 and by the US in 1808.

We fought a massive Civil War in the 1860’s to end slavery.

In 1866 Slavery abolished. US government treaties with the “Five Civilized Tribes” in the Indian Territory (the Cherokee Nation, Choctaw Nation, Chickasaw Nation, Muscogee Nation, and Seminole Nation), which allied with the Confederacy, required all five tribes to abolish slavery for renewed US recognition of their governments.

American Indians had not stopped the ownership of slaves Black or Indian.

So legal slave trading existed for 19 years in the US before it was outlawed.

Slavery continued until 1929 in Persia (Iran and other Muslim countries).

In fact forms of slavery are still practiced in the Middle East.

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