THE 1619 PROJECT: A NEW ORIGIN STORY by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others.

 

Published in November of 2021 by Random House Audio.
Multicast Performance
Duration: 18 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

I have developed a new hobby as of late - I read books that politicians tell people they should not read. The former governor of Indiana (and later the President of Purdue University) tried to prohibit Indiana University (or anyone else) to use a well-known history book to teach anyone anywhere. I read it. The Lt. Governor of Texas cancelled a book reading about the Alamo because it was not a hero worship book. There's a politician in Texas that posted a list of 850 books that he wants to ban across the state that has provided a lot of potential reading. 

But, in the last couple of years nothing, absolutely nothing, has compared to the 1619 Project and the controversy it has generated.

If you have not heard of the original 1619 Project, you have not been paying attention to America's culture wars. President Trump hated it so much he created a commission to counter its assertions. Local school boards are assailed with parents that demand it not be used in classrooms and several state legislatures have literally outlawed its use in classrooms by name.

The 1619 Project started out as a 100 page edition of The New York Times Magazine with a theme of looking at United States history through the lens of the African American experience. This book is an expanded version of the original magazine. 

All of that controversy and I can almost 100% guarantee that no more than a handful of the people who complain and pass laws have actually read the original magazine articles.

To be fair, I didn't read the original magazine articles, either. But, I jumped at the chance to hear this audiobook.

As I stated before, it is a history of the United States told through the perspective of typical African Americans. It is not a parade of famous African Americans, like you might see during Black History Month. 

One of the complaints that many politicians make is that it is critical of America. This is a ridiculous complaint. How much of American history has been a real positive time for African Americans? I am going to address that in a ridiculous way:

1619. First Africans arrive in Virginia. They are sold as slaves.
1620. Still enslaved.

1621. Still enslaved.

1622. Still enslaved.

1623. Still enslaved.

1624. First child born to the enslaved Africans. He is the first African American. He is born enslaved.

1702. African Americans are still enslaved.

1776. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." But, not African Americans, almost all of whom are still enslaved.

1892. African Americans are no longer enslaved. But, they have few civil rights in most states. They cannot vote in most states, they cannot sit on juries in most states. They can't even own guns in some states. Most live in a state of peonage to white landowners.

You get the idea.

This was never going to be an upbeat book. Let's face it - African Americans have gotten the short end of the stick in just about every way there has been to get the short end of the stick in American history right up to and including now. Is it better than it was in 1619? Certainly. Has America delivered on its declaration that all men are created equal? Not yet. That enduring fact is worth of comment. After all, if we don't recognize our shortcomings as a country, how can they be addressed?

My review:

The history in here is very solid. There are political complaints that it is riddled with errors and slanted. 

Here's a little secret from a history geek - all histories are slanted and riddled with errors because all historians interpret history. You can't write a complete history of, let's say, the Civil War because you can't literally include everything. You can't tell about every general, every division, every squad, every soldier and every bullet fired in every battle. There were 10,500 military engagements. You can't cover all of those in a book. Who would read a book that big? There were 50 major battles, but most histories don't even cover all of them.

Once you start cutting out parts from a history, you are interpreting it. When you decide that something is important enough to keep and other things are going to be cut from a history, you are slanting it and you are committing an error because the history is not complete. For example, everyone knows about Gettysburg - the only battle to be fought on non-slave state soil in the Civil War, right? It is in every history of the Civil War and rightly so. But, there was another battle fought on non-slave state soil 5 days after Gettysburg in Corydon, Indiana. The Confederate general was a famous one - John Hunt Morgan of Morgan's raiders. I have never read a Civil War history (I've reviewed 138 books that I've tagged "Civil War") that mentions this battle by name, even though the raid is often mentioned.  Are those histories slanted against the brave civilian militia from Indiana that tried to stop Morgan's men? No, of course not.

The 1619 Project is a history of African Americans. The traditional American heroes are not going to be heroes in this book. How can George Washington be a hero in this book when he owned African Americans and forced them to work for him under the threat of violence? How can Thomas Jefferson be a hero when he says that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and then complains in the same document that the British were arming escaped slaves and using them as soldiers (starting in 1775) and this made the other slaves hard to control - "He has excited domestic insurrections among us...". If all men were created equal in Jefferson's eyes, he should have been freeing and arming his own slaves. 

A frequent complaint is that The 1619 Project makes too big a deal of a British court decision that essentially outlawed slavery in the British Isles right before the tensions that created the Revolutionary War. I am sure that the colonists were aware of this case, but considering that so many of the colonists' complaints were about how the colonies were treated differently than their fellow citizens back in Britain, they must have assumed that the case simply did not and would not apply to them. It would have been a minor concern at best. But, after 1775 (see previous paragraph), it is certainly correct to say that slave owners could be worried about their slaves being taken away by British soldiers and to say that slaveowners would have been motivated to fight the British to keep their slaves.

My question is not why the court case in Britain was included in this history. It is  why haven't I heard of this case before. I have 51 books that I tagged "Revolutionary War" and this is the first I am hearing of it? It does point towards the beginnings a general trend that eventually resulted in Great Britain outlawing slavery, though.

Each chapter of the book is separated by a short work of fiction that accentuates the themes that are being explored. I literally have no problem with using fiction to accentuate history. When I taught history, I used to have my students pick out  a piece of historical fiction to read. Historical fiction can be so immersive that it makes the history seemingly come to life. But, I did not enjoy many of these interludes. There was a lot of poetry and I rarely enjoy poetry. Nothing wrong with the idea itself, but It fell very flat with me. If I had been reading a physical book, I would have skipped those sections entirely. But, I was listening to an audiobook and I had to keep listening.

I am still going to give this work a 5 star rating, though. Highly recommended, especially for those that are immediately against it because a politician or a talking head on a news channel told you it was wrong. Go to your library and read it for yourself if you are concerned about financially supporting the authors. It's okay to see history through the eyes of another culture.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE 1619 PROJECT:  A NEW ORIGIN STORY by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others.