The 1619 Project Is Reshaping How We Teach Slavery — But Is It Enough?

This past August, the New York Times released the 1619 Project, a compendium of journalism and poetry examining the 400 years since enslaved Africans arrived on American soil.

The multimedia project has been widely lauded as the first mainstream journalism to “reframe American history, centering the arrival of those first few dozens of enslaved Africans.” Now, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, the work at the core of the project is making its way into classrooms across the country — including many here in the D.C. region.

But critics argue the project is biased, incomplete, or even incorrect in its thesis. “You could say the same thing about the English common law, for example, or the use of the English language,” argued a such critic in New York Magazine.“You could say that about the Enlightenment. Or the climate. You could say that America’s unique existence as a frontier country bordered by lawlessness is felt even today in every mass shooting. You could cite the death of countless millions of Native Americans — by violence and disease — as something that defines all of us in America … but that would be to engage in a liberal inquiry into our past, teasing out the nuances.”...