Uncovering America's True Founding: The 1619 Project

JT Reynolds: All Americans should have this book.

United States on Mar 20, 2024

nanaray: This is a very interesting book. It's a tough subject and I have many emotions as I am reading it. I learned many things I had not known previously. It is clear and well written.

United States on Mar 08, 2024

Richard Middleton: It's hard for people like me, not born in the US, to really comprehend how deeply the country has been affected by its tumultuous past, and how much of that history is still very influential today. In fact, even many people born here seem oblivious to a degree. So this collection of essays is an essential corrective. Some critics say that the essays are not invariably historically accurate - but that is not the point! If the person you are talking to believes them to be accurate, then that is an attitude you need to comprehend if your conversation is to be in any way productive. Healing the present appalling divisiveness cannot be achieved by suppressing thought, shouting down people you disgree with, or by banning books from libraries. It can only be done by struggling to understand where the other person is coming from, and accepting that as a basic foundation (whether accurate or misconceived, it doesn't matter) for opening more constructive channels of communication. I think this book is vital background reading for all of us in the patronising majority.

United States on Jan 20, 2024

Patrick C. K.: This is one of the best books I have read. Full of history, compassion, suffering, hope and triumphs. As many already stated in the reviews, this should be required reading for students (rather than banned as it is in some schools that were forced to do so by their state governments).

Italy on Oct 30, 2023

Aalah: A pivotal piece of American history that explores slavery at its core and the long-term repercussions that are still prevalent today. It is gritty, truthful and well researched. An eye opening lesson in Black history.

Canada on Jul 22, 2023

Ricardo Mio: His name was Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a New York entertainer who performed under the stage name of T. D. Rice. In 1828, Rice had been a nobody actor in his early twenties, touring with a theater company in Cincinnati, when he saw a decrepit, disfigured old Black man singing while grooming a horse on the property of a white man whose last name was Crow. "On went the light bulb," writes Wesley Morris, one of several authors who composed essays for "The 1619 Project". "Rice took in the tune and the movements but failed, it seems, to take down the old man's name. So in his song, the horse groomer became who Rice needed him to be."

"Weel about and turn about jus so," went his tune, "ebery time I weel about, I jump Jim Crow."

With that, this white man invented the character who would become the mascot for two centuries of legalized racism in America.

Morris continues: "That night, Rice made himself up to look like the old Black Man, or some such thing like him, because for this getup, Rice most likely concocted skin blacker than any actual black person's; he invented a gibberish dialect meant to imply Black speech, and he turned the old man's melody and hobbled...

United States on May 31, 2023

diemg: I thought I understood the history of slavery and emancipation in USA - I do now. From the first Africans landing in 1619 who worked on the land and created the first houses to the 21st century when their descendants continue to live in the poorest areas and have less prospects than white kids with less academic achievements Project 1619 describes the continuing shame of Black discrimination. Black discrimination that means reparation for indigenous people, Japanese interned during WW2, and Holocaust survivors, but not for the descendents of Black slaves who provided the free labour that generated wealth. A must read for anyone that truly wants to understand the fight for equality, that has precipitated the Black Lives Matter movement.

(If reading on kindle, Don't be put off by "time to read" as half of this book is acknowledgements and references)

United Kingdom on Jun 26, 2022

matthew a. barrett: "Would America have been America without her Negro people?"
–W.E.B. Dubois

In exposing our nation’s troubled roots, the 1619 Project challenges us to think about American exceptionalism that we treat as the unquestioned truth. It asks us to consider who sets and shapes our shared national memory and what and particularly who gets left out.

Ana Lucia Araujo writes in Slavery in the Age of Memory, “despite its ambitions of objectivity,” public history is molded by the perspectives of the most powerful members of society. And in the United States, public history has often been “racialized, gendered and interwoven in the fabric of white supremacy." Yet it is still posed as objective.

This critique is not to imply that this generation of America's white citizens are personally responsible for slavery, or to suggest that the current generation of whites are ALL racist. Instead, this serves as a historical analysis of legal violence, subjugation, legal discrimination, and terrorism performed on behalf of white supremacist ideology. The 1619 Project provides a diagnosis and proposes a cure to the chronic illness of anti-black racism that continues to...

United States on Apr 08, 2022

Lamiya Bata: This is a phenomenal book- coming from someone who predominantly reads fiction. It provides a critical analysis of North American history and answers a lot of questions about why the USA is the way it is in present day.
It is heartbreaking to read at times. But it would be a disservice to the enslaved people to look away from their story, a story that isn’t often told or given its due respect.

P.s. the 1619 podcast is exceptional too!

Australia on Jan 13, 2022

Andreas: Viele setzen den Beginn der US-amerikanischen Geschichte auf das Jahr 1776, den Sieg über die Kolonialmächte, die Verfassung. Das 1619-Projekt datiert den Ursprung der USA zurück auf die Ankunft des ersten Schiffes, gefüllt mit afrikanischen Sklav*innen zur Ausbeutung im beginnenden amerikanischen Wirtschaftssystem. Was Nikole Hannah-Jones im NY Times Magazin begann, liegt nun ausgearbeitet als Buch vor. Wie brisant das Projekt ist, zeigt sich auch an den heftigen Gegenreaktionen des konservativen Lagers in den USA, das mit Macht versucht, den Einsatz des 1619-Projekts in Schulen zu unterbinden.

Germany on Dec 28, 2021