'1619 Project' Myths

False narratives about our origins

Originally published in 2019 in “The New York Times,” The 1619 Project has propagated itself as numerous editorials, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, and a curriculum taught in thousands of K-12 schools.¹ The destructive narrative has infiltrated our culture. Networks of well-funded, organized left-wing activists have kept it alive.

According to Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars: “The 1619 Project as a whole is myth-making aimed at intensifying identity politics and group grievance. It doesn’t aim, as it says, to tell ‘our story truthfully.’ It aims to tell it with falsehoods and deceptions for the purpose of instilling resentment.”² Here are some of the most glaring falsehoods.

Myth: The United States is evil today because it uniquely had a history of slavery. Fact: Archaeologists have found evidence that Homo sapiens have had slaves for at least 4,500 years. The earliest finds are in ancient Egypt. Africans have sold rivals and members of their own tribes into slavery for thousands of years. It was a deeply embedded practice long before Europeans first visited Africa. The Arabs developed a massive slave trade selling African slaves. Eventually, the Portuguese and Spanish bought slaves from the Arab slave traders and created the trans-Atlantic slave trade, transporting African slaves to the New World. Less than 10 percent of these slaves were brought the North America. Over 90 percent of slaves went to the Central and South America, where many labored in silver mines under dangerous and brutal conditions.³

Myth: Slavery began in North America in 1619. Fact: Slavery was already here well before then. Native American tribes had practiced slavery for thousands of years. Since the early 1500s, Portuguese and Spanish traders shipped thousands of African slaves to the Caribbean, Mexico and Spanish colonies in North and South America. Historical records from the early to mid 1600s show the British colonists in North America—some of whose descendants later founded the U.S.—treated slaves as indentured servants. People who were bought as slaves could work their way out of slavery and become free; some owned their own businesses and even their own slaves.⁴ Chattel slavery, the lifelong enslavement of people and their offspring—practiced worldwide for millennia—did not develop in the British colonies in America until later.

Myth: The arrival of slaves in Virginia was the real founding of America. Fact: The lead author of The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, admits she arbitrarily chose 1619 as the starting date for America based on a story she read as a teenager about some slaves arriving in Virginia. She also chose it because her project’s publication date of 2019 was conveniently 400 years after the year 1619, and that sounded good to her.⁵ In truth, the United States originated in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence announced the creation of a new nation free from British tyranny.

Myth: The primary purpose of the Revolutionary War was to preserve slavery. Fact: Before and after the Revolutionary War, British ships made lucrative profits plying the waters of the New World selling boatloads of slaves. The British opposed slavery in England but continued promoting it in their colonies abroad; they had no intention of ending slavery in the American colonies.⁶ The real purpose of the Revolutionary War was to free the colonialists from tyrannical British rule. The colonialists’ complaints are enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Published in 1776, the Declaration announced the formation of a new nation unshackled from the British monarchy. The War commenced soon afterwards.

Myth: Southern plantation slavery was the foundation of American capitalism. Fact: Free societies have engaged in free enterprise throughout millennia. In America, the industrial revolution in the North fueled America’s economic growth, not cotton plantations in the South. The opposite of free enterprise, slave economies create poverty for the general population, not prosperity. The South lost the Civil War because its plantation slavery couldn’t compete economically with the North’s industrial capitalism.⁷

Myth: Abraham Lincoln was a racist. Fact: Abraham Lincoln began campaigning against slavery 10 years before the start of the Civil War. In 1854, Lincoln said:

If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal’; and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.

As U.S. President, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. He fought the Civil War to free the slaves from powerful Confederate interests that would destroy the union to preserve slavery. He promoted the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1865, abolishing slavery in the United States. The 1619 Project relies on cherry-picked quotes stripped of historical context to create a racialist narrative.⁸

Myth: American history is best described as a struggle of blacks against white supremacy. Fact: As anyone who studies history knows, the U.S. was not founded on slavery or racism. The United States of America was founded on the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The U.S. Constitution, along with its amendments and Bill of Rights, has created the freest and most prosperous society in human history. Today, claims of victimhood from slavery, which ended over 150 years ago, are often pretexts for a totalitarian makeover of our government. As critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi famously said, you can’t be antiracist unless you are anticapitalist.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, concludes:

The 1619 Project is not legitimate journalism, and it isn’t legitimate history either. It is mainly an assemblage of poorly sourced assertions—an extended opinion piece…The 1619 Project consists of an effort to destroy America by teaching children that America never really existed, except as a lie told by white people in an effort to control black people. It eradicates American history and American values in one sweep.⁹

The best defense against fake narratives is to study history from reputable sources. Hillsdale College offers free online courses for the public about American history and a free K-12 school curriculum.

1. Hannah-Jones, Nikole. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. The New York Times Company, 2021.

2. Wood, Peter. 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. Encounter Books, 2020.

3. See footnotes 1 and 2.

4. Seet footnote 2.

5. See footnote 1.

6. See footnote 2.

7. See footnote 2.

8. See footnote 1 and 2.

9. See footnote 2.