The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to slavery, physical and sexual abuse, and anti-Black racism.

In the preface of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, Nikole Hannah-Jones describes reading about the year 1619 for the first time. This year marks the first time a ship containing enslaved Africans came to the shores of North America. Arriving in Virginia aboard the White Lion, approximately 20 to 30 Africans were sold to British colonists. Hannah-Jones writes that she was struck by the fact that slavery in the United States was older than the country itself, and it sparked in her a quest to uncover the many ways in which slavery impacted the American identity. She spoke with her editors at The New York Times Magazine about putting together a special issue that would articulate a perspective on American history different from the traditional colonial lens.

In August 2019, The New York Times published a special issue called “The 1619 Project,” commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the White Lion. The work challenges the notion that the origins of the United States begin with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Instead, the project argues that the American identity was forged much earlier and was shaped by and interconnected with the institution of slavery. The issue contained fiction and poetry, each paired with 10 essays on a wide range of historical and social topics, including the contributions of Black people to society, the connection between slavery and American capitalism, the cultural appropriation of Black music and art, and the pervasiveness of racism in medicine and science.

The magazine was so popular that long lines formed of people seeking to buy the soon-sold-out issue. The New York Times devoted space for more pieces related to the project in later issues, and the Pulitzer Center helped to develop a corresponding school curriculum. The 1619 Project continued to expand into podcasts and miniseries on the streaming platform Hulu. The book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story was released in November 2021. In 2020, Hannah-Jones was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Later that year, a conservative advocacy group published a letter asking that Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer Prize be rescinded due to factual inaccuracy.

The political world was rocked by the reframing of history Hannah-Jones outlines in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. While liberal politicians like Kamala Harris praised the work, their conservative peers, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former President Donald Trump, dismissed The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story as leftist propaganda. Since the project began, many conservative groups and politicians have fought to keep The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story out of school curricula. In 2020, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton proposed a bill that would limit the possibility of K-12 schools to teach The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story curriculum. Since Cotton’s initial proposal, 27 states have faced bills seeking to ban The 1619 Project from schools.

Some of the information presented in the project has been contested by historians, including the date that slavery originated in the United States. Hannah-Jones addresses some of these arguments in the book—including the arrival of enslaved African to the Americas in 1526 and the prevalence of enslaved Indigenous people prior to 1619. A handful of historians criticized the assertion that the colonists were compelled to start the American Revolution to preserve slavery and also contested claims about Abraham Lincoln’s racist ideologies. Leslie M. Harris, one of the factcheckers for the project, wrote an article for Politico, in which she explains that she had shared concerns with The New York Times about the strong assertions that slavery and the American Revolution were intrinsically connected. In her article, Harris explains that she feels The New York Times could have avoided criticism by being more diligent and expresses concern that conservatives have used a few minute details to embolden a campaign against The 1619 Project (Harris, Leslie M. “I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me.” Politico, 6 Mar. 2020).

Hannah-Jones pushed back against repeated criticism, arguing that her work was not intended to be a comprehensive and all-encompassing look at American history. Instead, The 1619 Project was designed to shed light on untold stories and the complicated relationship between slavery and the American identity. For example, her assertion that 1619 marks America’s true founding is a metaphorical statement, emphasizing the influential effects of slavery on the original English colonies and beyond.

Harris’s article highlights a critical component of the political debate over the project. While those opposed to the project point to a handful of contested facts to justify the complete dismissal of the work, the debate is part of a larger political battle about information, education, and the accessibility of knowledge. The American Library Association reports that challenges to books in public libraries increased 63% from 2022 to 2023, reflecting a similar trend in schools (“Book Ban Data.” American Library Association). Nearly half of these books were targeted for content related to LGBTQIA+ identity, while books about BIPOC characters or by BIPOC authors were also disproportionately targeted for bans. In October 2022, Nikole Hannah-Jones appeared on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show on CBS. During the interview, Colbert asked Hannah-Jones about her reaction to states that had already attempted to ban The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story from schools. She answered, “A free society does not ban books.”