Posted on 08/25/2019 11:49:45 AM PDT by SJackson
“The goal of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times that this issue of the magazine inaugurates, is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year,” The New York Times Magazine editors declare. “Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.”
The scale of the opening offering is massive by the standards of modern journalism: 100 pages (with a few ads), ten essays, a photo essay, and a collection of original poems and stories from 16 additional writers.
But the 1619 Project’s effort to “reframe American history” requires cropping out some significant figures in African-American history. Perhaps no near-100-page collection of essays, poems and photos could cover every significant figure in African-American history, but the number of prominent figures who never even get mentioned or who get only the most cursory treatment is pretty surprising.
Early in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay, she reiterates the important point, “in every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.” The name Crispus Attucks is mentioned three times, but he is, as far as I can tell, the lone black Revolutionary War combatant mentioned. James Armistead was a spy for Lafayette who had access to General Cornwallis’s headquarters. Back in 1996, the New York Times wrote about the First Rhode Island Regiment, who fought at Newport and Pine’s Bridge, and in a regrouped form, Yorktown. By one account, one-quarter of the American forces at the battle of Yorktown were black. The 1619 Project does not mention the Battle of Yorktown.
One might argue that the essay authors preferred to focus on lesser-known African-American historical figures . . . but you really have to strain to contend James Armistead is sufficiently widely known already. Could anyone seriously argue that African-American contributions to the Revolutionary War are too well-known?
Martin Delany was an abolitionist, the first African American accepted to Harvard Medical School (white students quickly forced him out), and the first African-American field grade officer in the U.S. Army in 1865. He’s quoted once in passing.
In the early 1860s, about 179,000 black men enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops, almost 10 percent of the entire Union army. The U.S. Colored Troops are not mentioned in the 1619 Project. The Buffalo Soldiers are not mentioned in the 1619 Project. There is a brief mention of African-American soldiers heading west after the Civil War: “Even while bearing slavery’s scars, black men found themselves carrying out orders to secure white residents of Western towns, track down ‘‘outlaws’’ (many of whom were people of color), police the federally imposed boundaries of Indian reservations and quell labor strikes.” Stay Updated with NR Daily
In the seven times African-American soldiers mentioned, they are generally described as victims who have merely shifted from one system of subjugation and exploitation to another.
There’s no mention of the Harlem Hellfighters fighting in World War One, and no mention of Dorie Miller’s heroism at Pearl Harbor. The horrors of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male are discussed, but the Tuskegee Airmen are never mentioned.
African-American heroism on the battlefield doesn’t really fit the narrative that the 1619 Project is trying to tell. In fact, you could argue that the essays are so wedded to a narrative of white brutality and black victimhood that they seem to fear that spotlighting any example of a successful African-American defiance of oppression would undermine their argument. In the reframing of the 1619 Project, African-American success stories disappear. There’s no mention of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games. There’s no mention of Jackie Robinson. There’s no mention of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the African-American mathematicians who worked for NASA as depicted in the film Hidden Figures. Wilberforce University in Ohio, the first college owned and operated by African Americans, is not mentioned.
The attack on Negro Fort in Florida is mentioned, but not the existence of its nearby predecessor Fort Mose, the first free African-American community in North America, founded in the 1730s.
Frederick Douglass is mentioned twice. W.E.B. du Bois is quoted once. Thurgood Marshall is mentioned once.
Harriet Tubman is never mentioned. Nor is Booker T. Washington nor is Bishop Richard Allen, who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. Abolitionist Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisom (the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress), Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. (the first African-American general for the U.S. Army), Ida Wells (a journalist who documented lynchings and co-founded the NAACP), Duke Ellington, and Rosa Parks are never mentioned.
Would the country as a whole be better off with a greater understanding of slavery and its legacy in American history? Absolutely. (The country would be better off with more understanding of just about any chapter of American history.) The 1619 Project argues, with considerable justification, that most of us been seeing only one part of the portrait of the founding, formation, and growth of our country . . . and then “reframes” the portrait to leave out some of the most consequential and under-discussed African Americans in our history.
These people are too dense to realize that slavery existed for thousands of years before 1619.
The USA helped lead the world to END slavery.
It still exists today in mostly muslim countries, but the media won’t talk about that.
You cant reframe American history with respect to people who aren’t in any way, manner, shape or form Americans.
The first person to legally own slaves in the Americas was a black man.
Free blacks owned black slaves.
American Indians owned black slaves.
Etc.
The seeds of the United States began not in 1619 with the introduction of slaves but in 1492 when a European, Columbus, discovered 'The New World'
By 1619 many settlements had been established before any African slaves arrived.
1619 is not THE story. It's only one aspect of the story.
” today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military” -— I seriously doubt that.
for 6000 THOUSAND YEARS prior to the mid-18th century slavery is an accepted institution in virtually ALL countries, societies and cultures.
Within 100 YEARS of the writing and implementation of the Declaration of Independence, the US Bill of Rights and American Constitution slavery has been outlawed worldwide- (not that it didn’t yet persist..in some Middle Eastern countries it didn’t die out until the early 20th century even tho technically illegal)
these people-despite that some of them are “Ivy League educated” ...are stupid.
I suspect the author is mixing 'racial group' with minority group.
Whites, in her mind, are NOT a 'racial group'.
I thought the “new” in the word “newspaper” referred to stuff that just happened - so the “news” in this major New York Times “newspaper” article is something that happened 400 years ago? (And that they get exactly wrong - slavery that existed everywhere in 1619 was on its way out as soon as Jefferson wrote “All men are created equal” in the Declaration).
According to “Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States: 1600 to 1865,” by Tony Seybert, “Most Native American tribal groups practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America.”
The paper itself
Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States: 1600 to 1865 by Tony Seybert
https://mmslibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/slavery-and-native-americans-in-british-north-america-and-the-united-states.pdf
bump
“reframe American history”
George Orwell’s “1984” wasn’t meant to be used as a manual ...
Jamestown was founded in 1607. There is much to be learned from what happened there in the 12 years before any Africans were present in what was then the only English colony in mainland North America.
What should be remembered most about 1619 is the creation of the House of Burgesses--the beginning of the tradition of self-government in the English colonies which later became the US.
Revisionists preparing the battlefield.
What it leaves out: the objective truth.
In 1619, it was folks from various EUROPEAN countries who came here to set things up according to THEIR cultures..
In 1776, we became a nation, under GOD, and began dealing with cleaning up the wrong stuff those earlier pioneers brought here.
Wonder if they mention Sarah Breedlove in their “Project”?
I’m assuming they ignored Marva Collins too.
Why doesn’t someone write a history of anti-Semitism at the NYTimes?
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