Mary Grabar, author of “Debunking The 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America.” Instead, they would ask students how societal structures perpetuate the enslavement of black people. History teachers, under such a program, would abandon the narrative of the Civil War, emancipation, and the Civil Rights movement. It threatens to destroy civics education as it has been taught for generations in K-12 education.

The Pulitzer Center helped turn the 1619 Project into a curriculum that’s now taught in more than 4,500 schools across the nation. Most concerning, public schools began incorporating into their curricula early this year. The creator Nicole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for Commentary.

And like all conspiracy theories, the 1619 Project announces with a eureka! that it has acquired the explanation to everything.” Fellow Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has circulated a letter objecting to the project, and the letter acquired signatories like James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes, all leading scholars in their field who object to very basic factual inaccuracies in the project.ĭespite the 1619 Project’s numerous historical inaccuracies, the project has spread like wildfire. Princeton historian Allen Guelzo said that “the 1619 Project is not history it is conspiracy theory. The project was condemned by historians from left to right. Specific claims include the following: the Revolutionary War was fought above all to preserve slavery, that capitalism was birthed on the plantation, and features of American society like traffic jams or affinity for sugar are connected to slavery and segregation. It reviews slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated with the understanding that it must soon evaporate, but as the prize that the Constitution went out of its way to secure and protect. See More 1776, are at the core of American identity. Released last year in a special issue of the New York Times Magazine, it is a collection of articles which 'aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of national narrative.” More specifically, it claims that the United States is fundamentally and irrevocably racist. The biggest and most controversial historical debate in 2021 is the 1619 Project.

History unplugged