'The 1619 Project' by Nikole Hannah-Jones

 

‘The 1619 Project’ is an astounding achievement by Nikole Hannah-Jones and her co-authors. This historical compilation of material focusing on the four hundred years of the Black experience in America will become a valued resource and touchpoint for generations to come. ‘The 1619 Project’ is a must-read to truly comprehend the oppressive history of our country. Despite overt hostility by many white Americans, healing, reconciliation, and progress cannot occur without an understanding of the horrific past that has led us to our troubled present. 

 The book begins in 1619 when a ship, ironically called The White Lion arrives in America carrying twenty to thirty enslaved Africans. The book ends in May 2020, the year George Floyd is murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.  The initial transporting and enslavement of Africans set in motion the brutal exploitation of Black people that has persisted in America in various forms for the last four centuries. Floyd’s recent murder by the police punctuates the point that Black Americans continue to be oppressed by prejudice and violence. Though the book describes persistent injustice, there are also beautiful descriptions of the many impressive achievements and contributions of Black Americans. 

 

Comprised of essays written by different authors, the eighteen chapters cover topics from music and medicine to politics and punishment.  Each essay speaks to the history of the Black experience while revealing the oppressive origins of numerous American institutions. A poem or piece of fiction precedes each chapter. The joining of these two literary forms is powerful.  

 

The book is deep and detailed. Here are two quotes by the lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, that summarizes the book’s focus. 

 

“On the contrary, facing the truth liberates us to build the society we wish to be. One of the criticisms of the project is that we focus too much on the brutality of slavery and our nation’s legacy of anti-Blackness. But just as central to the history we are highlighting is the way that Black Americans have managed, out of the most inhumane circumstances, to make an indelible impact on the United States, serving as its most ardent freedom fighters and forgers of culture.  The enslaved and their descendants played a central role in shaping our institutions, our intellectual traditions, our music, art, and literature, our very democracy.  The struggle of Black Americans to force this country to live up to its professed ideals have served as inspiration to oppressed people across the globe. Too long have we shrouded and overlooked these singular contributions. They form a legacy of which every American should be proud.” 

 

“We sometimes forget – and I would argue it is an intentional forgetting-that the racism we are fighting today was originally conjured to justify working unfree Black people, often until death, to generate extravagant riches for European colonial powers, the white planter class, and all the ancillary white people, from Midwestern farmers to bankers to sailors to textile workers who earned their living and built their wealth from that free Black labor and the products that labor produced.  The prosperity of this country is inextricably linked with the forced labor of the ancestors of more than 30 million Black Americans, just as it is linked to the stolen land of the country’s Indigenous people.” 

 

Without a truthful accounting and apology of America’s racist origins, healing and progress are not possible. Nikki Hannah-Jones and her talented colleagues have documented the history of Black Americans. In another time, this book could provoke changes to unjust policies and an acknowledgment of America’s transgressions past and present. Given the overt racism and hostility to democracy currently permeating our country, immediate change may not be possible. But this powerful, well-researched and beautifully written book will endure and with it the seeds of hope.