1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project

by Peter W. Wood

When and where was America founded? Was it in Virginia in 1619, when a pirate ship landed a group of captive Africans at Jamestown? So asserted the New York Times in August 2019 when it announced its 1619 Project. The Times set out to transform history by tracing American institutions, culture, and prosperity to that pirate ship and the exploitation of African Americans that followed. A controversy erupted, with historians pushing back against what they say is a false narrative conjured out of racial grievance.



This book sums up what the critics have said and argues that the proper starting point for the American story is 1620, with the signing of the Mayflower Compact aboard ship before the Pilgrims set foot in the Massachusetts wilderness. A nation as complex as ours, of course, has many starting points, most notably the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But the quintessential ideas of American self-government and ordered liberty grew from the deliberate actions of the Mayflower immigrants in 1620.

Schools across the country have already adopted the Times' radical revision of history as part of their curricula. The stakes are high. Should children be taught that our nation is a four-hundred-year-old system of racist oppression? Or should they learn that what has always made America exceptional is our pursuit of liberty and justice for all?

Genres: History, Politics, American History, Nonfiction, Cultural, Historical, Race

272 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 17, 2020

Reviews

[Lois · Rating 1 out of 5]

"We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture." ~ Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Look I finished this but there's really nothing here.
Most of this amounts to 'Wah, my ancestors look bad if you center marginalized peoples in the narrative.
Wah, identity politics, how dare POC want history to include their experiences, that's integration not history!'

I honestly was expecting the author to have more than racism with which to make a point but I hoped in vain.

I planned to take this argument down point by point and fact by fact. Unfortunately it's mostly organized as a whine-fest to The 1619 Project.

Look, history isn't truth, it's an interpretation of what facts remain. What a historian chooses to focus and include in their history is a reflection of their own bias.

The 1619 Project is the story of Black Americans, our story won't match that of white Americans but we are still entitled to our own history that tells the story from our point of view.
This book is unnecessary because US history already focuses on and tells the white supremacist view of history.

White people don't have to be upset about the 1619 Project, your racist version of history not only still exists but is told and taught more. The 1619 Project is no threat to you and if read with your version of history, which it will be, offers a more well rounded and complete view of what actually happened. Now we need Native American viewpoints and we are getting to most accurate view of what actually happened during this time period.

This is necessary because history as it currently exists for the most part is the formal study of white supremacy passed off as a scholarly subject.
That's because the study of history as a discipline has it's roots in white supremacy as does anthropology & archeology.

This is a well known fact and to have an accurate record of ACTUAL history the experience of EVERYONE involved will have to be included from THEIR point of view.

This is jarring when all you've all ever known is a white supremacist view of history.

Christopher Columbus was a liar, a thief, an enslaver and a colonizer. He stole from his own crew and had zero redeeming features. There is no fixing him and really no need to try.

It's not okay to steal from people because their skin is brown🤷🏾‍♀️ The Europeans god did not give them land already occupied by other folks, they stole that land and murdered those people. To dismiss Native American view points when they made up 99.9% of the population at the time this occurred really shows you this is just white supremacy passing itself off as history. Since the only opinions and experiences that are worth shaping the historical narrative belong to white people.

Even the authors basics don't pass the sniff test. The Pilgrims aren't a 'diverse' group of Europeans, they were white Christians who had dogmatic differences. The idea they that decided to treat each other fairly while they stole from Native Americans isn't the groundbreaking moment of diverse unity the author thinks it is.

The author fails to mention that the 1619 Project was first published in the newspaper. Newspapers have to meet a significant and rigorous fact checking department prior to publication. Nothing printed in the 1619 Project was unable to be cleared by a team of fact checkers. That's vastly different than this book which has zero fact checkers, this is literally just this authors biased views on history. The author fails to acknowledge this because this book is literally a racist response to the 1619 Project.

No attempt is made the author to be fair or unbiased.
Demanding that white supremacist history that doesn't include the point of view of all parties involved can be the only valid history, isn't history, it's propaganda and that's exactly what this book is. Primarily because the author pretends that Black Americans having a foundation story that reflects their experiences is unworthy and harmful to white people, this book remains racist propaganda for white supremacists. A Nazi History of the Pilgrims & 1620.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 1 out of 5]

This lost any possible value when it turned out this wasn’t just a performance piece about how to not understand the assignment. Nary a single poem in the entire revisionist gaggle of garbage, which reads mostly like your weird, handsy uncle drunk on the cheap whisky he creepily thinks is cool to drink beyond the age of 18 going on a rant post-thanksgiving dinner where you can’t fathom for the life of you what relevance it has on anything in natural reality. Nobody involved has apparently ever heard of professionalism. There’s some really bonkers shit in here that can’t even be dignified as sophomoric edgelord rants because it’s not self aware enough to realize that being beside-the-point and full of logical leaps as well as lame bad faith rhetoric isn’t edgy, it’s just embarrassing. Theres some half-hearted attempts at championing the Mayflower Compact but the majority of this book is simply attacking the The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story from every angle possible and most of them being so beyond irrelevant and missing the point as to tell on themselves as being unable to think critically about a text. This book is written by and for people who cannot engage with life unless it is a profitability metric, and the arguments that slavery was inevitably okay because it lead to a profitable economy aren’t just weird and gross but basically a confession that you are definitely someone not to trust in any situation. Like ever. Using metrics to argue against emotional response is like trying to write a poem with a shovel, and it’s just weird.

It all reminds me of a former coworker who once complained he failed an essay in college on the topic of “write about a community you are a part of.” Instead of choosing something on topic, which there are many available options such as "I work at this job which is literally a community of coworkers" or "I live in Michigan" seeing as Michigan likes to engage in soft-core nationalism with all its cutesy Michigander bumper stickers, he wrote his paper about how, well actually he’s never been in a community because he’s such a "lone wolf". Objectively false but you get my point, just so much wanting to make a point that it ignores virtually anything outside of their own tunnel vision.

There's an odd attempt in this book to admit that slavery has an upwards influence on society while also minimizing it's importance and legacy. It's that sort of false objectivity and "middle ground" pandering that always reeks of sealioning. Nikole Hannah-Jones is frequently in the cross-hairs here, particularly for statements about British abolitionism and the Revolutionary War. It all comes across as intentional misunderstanding and bad faith rhetoric for the sake of a "gotcha", but also ignores something that Emma Dabiri points out that early abolitionists weren't necessarily not racist, just that they didn't 'think they should be treated discriminatorily.' There was a massive power imbalance and instead of address that, this book just pretends that wasn't a thing, as if everyone had an equal opportunity. Furhtermore, there is zero class analysis in this book and it comes across as carefully tiptoeing around to ensure there are no openings for criticisms of inequality. This whole book reads like white-knuckled terror that people will recognize that challenging the status quo is necessary to address inequality for everyone.

But for real now, how do you get off on some halfassed for-profit book that wants to argue slavery wasn’t a bad thing? Also how is your response to a book that is like half poetry to write some poorly edited stuff talking about how the colonizers couldn’t be racist because they came from multiple countries and mostly got along. A bunch of white dudes mostly getting along while stealing indigenous land isn’t the flex you think it is. Also a VAST majority of this book is a straight up sob fest about how pointing out historical atrocities makes people feel bad. Boo fucking hoo bro, I feel bad about a lot of shit but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage with it. And if your reaction to it is to get mad some dead people are being criticized, you are entirely missing the point. Also why do they want to redeem Christopher Columbus so badly? There’s some rants in here just frothing at the mouth to talk about how he’s been “unfairly treated” that makes me suspect you should not let Peter Wood near your child.

The aspect that really bothers me about this book is honestly just how beside the point almost everything in this is. I just need to say that again. Who read this and thought, oh yea, this makes sense as a “rebuttal” to the The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Where are the poems? There's an awkward posturing about being mad about "biases", but okay, yea everything written in language is inherently biased due to the nature of language and the author here offers no counter to any of that. Yet then does the exact same thing without any attempt at artistry but claims to be unbiased? I can’t say anything positive or even entertain the ideas present because this book takes itself seriously on a premise that is as unserious as clown shoes. Was there any oversight or editor in any of this? Also who lost the bet to let someone’s half dead dog format this and choose the font? Was anyone even taking this seriously? Is this all some sort of gag? It’s like nobody even had the self respect to try.

Ps Columbus is super dead and won’t read your stupid vanity press book, stop defending him.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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After the election and re-election of the first African-American president, Americans might have thought that they were in a period of reconciliation. The acquisition of the top spot in American politics could be thought of as proof positive that America in the 21st century has essentially moved beyond its racist past and made good on the promise of equality.

Alas, that was not to be. America's political elites have far too much invested in identity politics and racist grievances. President Obama's acquisition of the presidency was in no small part due to fostering America's guilt about its treatment of blacks and the monolithic black vote. Democrats. The cultural bloc that control the Democrat coalition was obviously not going to give up the power of race-baiting. However, with the absence of actual racism, the cultural elite have had to play up racist hysteria to disguise the absence of real racism.

And, thus, we come to a Ministry of Truth effort to rewrite history.

Peter Wood's "1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project" is an effort by the president of the National Association of Scholars ("NAS") to respond to the pseudo-academic malpractice that is being foisted on Americans by the New York Times and the Woke activists who represent the elite bloc of the Democrat Party. The particular vehicle used by these institutions is the self-proclaimed "1619 Project" which seeks to teach school children that America's true founding date was not 1776, but 1619 when the first slaves were brought to America, thus tainting all of American history with the the agenda of preserving slavery as the raison d'etre for all Americans at all times (or as many Americans for as much time as they can safely tar with the broadest brush they can find.)

Peter Woods does an able job of demonstrating the academic malpractice involved and, more importantly, the political agenda that informs the gross academic malpractice. The 1619 project is scholarship only to the extent that cherry-picking talking points from minority opinions and then spinning the points to the desired goal is scholarship. Woods documents how shoddy the "scholarship" was behind this re-invention of history. Woods writes:

"The lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, who makes some of the most audacious claims, cites no sources at all: the project as presented in the magazine contains no footnotes, bibliography, or other scholarly footholds."

In essence, what you have is the "scholarship" found on Facebook or Twitter where assertions are stated and accepted based on how they fit the Woke cultural zeitgeist.

More importantly, Woods reveals the attacks on American historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, who in the Woke scheme of things was a bitter racist who supported slavery. Thus, the 1619 Project ignores Lincoln's clear statements of his belief in the equality of the races and the foundation of the Civil War in the issue of slavery. Woods states:

"IN HER LEAD ESSAY for the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones calls out Abraham Lincoln as a racist. Her evidence for this charge is an August 14, 1862, White House meeting between Lincoln and five black leaders in which Lincoln “informed his guests that he had gotten Congress to appropriate funds to ship black people, once freed, to another country.” Lincoln said, as Hannah-Jones quotes him: “Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. … Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side.”1 He seems to call for treating whites and blacks in dramatically different ways, to the disadvantage of blacks. Lincoln did not propose deporting any European Americans back to the continent of their ancestral origins. The phrase “ours suffer from your presence” certainly sounds both insulting and racist.
But there is more to the story. The questions that hang over a lot of studies of Lincoln is whether he always meant what he said, or whether he sometimes said things out of political calculation. In this chapter I explain why Hannah-Jones’s account of that White House meeting is wrong, and more broadly, why Lincoln was not a racist. But we will have to give fair-minded hearings to both sides – something that Hannah-Jones herself declined to do. I will not say that her view is eyewash from beginning to end. There are historians who basically basically agree with her. But the weight of evidence is against them – and her."

Woods sets forth his arguments about why Lincoln's conversation - with a reporter present - was for public consumption by those who may have resisted emancipation. As such, Lincoln's ploy ranks up with that of President Obama who was against gay-marriage until it was made a constitutional right by the Supreme Court.

Woods' argument turns on paying attention to details and asking questions - what about that reporter? - something that 1619 Project will not do with its Manechian projection of the good and the bad sides of the issue. This Manechian projection is something that I find with a lot of Woke history; Woke ideology is two-dimensional and simplistic, denying the interesting complexity of real people and real events.

Another example is found in the 1619 Project's efforts to make Lincoln into a white supremacist:

"The complications here are that Lincoln was a public orator known for his ardent opposition to the expansion of slavery and his belief that blacks had the same fundamental rights as whites. He was frequently in a position of threading the needle: How could he advance his principles while trying to win the support of audiences who did not necessarily support, even if they did not vehemently oppose, his agenda? The lines that Hannah-Jones quotes are masterpieces of subversive rhetoric. They sound on first hearing as though Lincoln is expressing his opposition to black equality. But look again. He asks a rhetorical question and provides an equivocal answer. His “feelings” will not “admit” political and social equality, but as Lincoln’s defenders often point out, Lincoln didn’t take political and social equality off the table. He just took those topics out of the debate he was in at the moment."

Likewise, the 1619 Project relies on discredited Woke race-mongers for its support:

"Although Hannah-Jones did not cite sources in her article, in this case her source was easily identified. Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to Hillary Clinton, has been publishing a multivolume “survey of Lincoln’s political life” and writing occasional pieces on Lincoln in the Washington Monthly. Blumenthal took notice of Hannah-Jones’s debt to Lerone Bennett Jr., an editor at Ebony magazine who once wrote an article called “Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?” and who followed up with a book, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (2000). Hannah-Jones “recapitulates Lerone Bennett’s projection of Lincoln as an inveterate racist and committed white supremacist, and the Emancipation Proclamation as a sham.”9
In a review written for none other than the New York Times, the great Civil War historian and Lincoln biographer James M. McPherson immediately buried Bennett’s wild accusations in the graveyard of incompetent and malicious books, describing it as “a tendentious work of scholarship, marred by selective evidence taken out of context, suppressive of contrary evidence, heedless of the cultural and political climate that constrained Lincoln’s options and oblivious to Lincoln’s capacity for growth.”10 Yet Bennett’s incompetently researched tome was apparently a goldmine for Hannah-Jones."

Woods also points out that the basic assumption of the 1619 Project is tendentious. The Africans imported may not have been slaves; in fact it appears that at least one subsequently obtained his freedom, maried, and purchased slaves:

//How much less onerous is evident in the subsequent careers of some of those who endured servitude along the shores of the Chesapeake. An especially well-attested case was an individual known as Antonio, who may have been among those individuals sold by Captain Jope in 1619, though he doesn’t enter the historical record until two years later when he was set to work on the Bennett family plantation.7 He was eventually freed, renamed himself Anthony Johnson, got married, raised children, became a plantation owner himself, and acquired African slaves of his own. He successfully sued one of his white neighbors in a Virginia court.8 Plainly, Virginian “slavery” was not a total institution then, nor would it ever become so in the antebellum South."

History is surprisingly complicated. This is not the only story of Africans social mobility in the New World.

Woods prefers 1620 as the founding date of American history since that was the year that the Pilgrims arrived. What Woods finds significant about the Pilgrims is that it exemplified the self-organization and enterprise that has more to say about America than slavery.

Woods does not deny either that slavery played a significant role in American history or that there have been times when American schools have downplayed the role of slavery in American history. However, that criticism can not be laid at the feet of history education after approximately 1970.

Woods also does a nice job of debunking the King Cotton narrative which was a Southern Slaver's trope picked up by Woke activists. On this point, I really invite everyone to read "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States" by Frederick Law Olmstead. Olmstead wrote this book in the 1840s and it categorizes his observations about the detrimental effects that slavery had on Southern society.

Woods ends his book with a section on "what is to be done?" His advice is to learn and share history. I often do that but I have found that any good thing I say about American history will receive Woke responses reminding that "America was not perfect" and "what about" this or that event. It is fascinating that Americans have been trained to instintively respond to positive statements about America with automatic "Debbie Downerism." Woods points out that this tendency has migrated to conservatives. He points to the example of an article published in National Review that kind of/sort of took the 1619 Project to task but refuses to defend any counter-narrative. Woods points out:

"It is hard to imagine that someone who thinks like that will play any constructive role in resisting the corruption of our schools in the direction of the 1619 project’s slavery-is-the-foundation-of-everything-in-this-vile-white-supremacist-society curriculum. As for 1620, he scoffs, “Like English colonists elsewhere, the Pilgrims and their descendants then stripped Native populations of their land through dubious property transactions and episodic wars.”

I don't think this is an accident. If these people don't hate America, then their emotional state is one which takes pleasure in a masochistic contempt for America. Since this seems counter-intuitive, I took some reassurance in Woods' observation:

"The 1619 Project is, arguably, part of a larger effort to destroy America by people who find our nation unbearably bad. The project treats the founding principles of our nation as an illusion – a contemptible illusion. In their place is a single idea: that America was founded on racist exploitation. The form of this racist exploitation has shifted from time to time, from chattel slavery to free-market mechanisms, but its character has not changed at all. There is no American history as such, but only an eternal present consisting of white supremacy and black suffering. The 1619 Project thus 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."

And what effect does this have on African-Americans?

"Insisting on mere accuracy is unlikely to sway people whose sensibility has been formed along these lines. How then is the 1619 Project to be defeated? One possible answer is the work of Robert Woodson and the Woodson Center, based in Washington, DC. Woodson is a humanitarian, a community-development advocate, and a civil-rights activist known for his efforts to stem youth violence. He is the editor of two books, Youth Crime and Urban Policy: A View from the Inner City (1981) and On the Road to Economic Freedom: An Agenda for Black Progress (1987), and the author of The Triumphs of Joseph: How Today’s Community Healers Are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods (1998). He was also among the first national figures to criticize the Times’ initiative.
Ten days after the magazine presented the 1619 Project, Woodson published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the project would hurt blacks by encouraging a sense of victimhood. He immediately discerned the core theme of the project: “Whites have always been and continue to be the beneficiaries of both slavery and its attendant institutional racism – and blacks the perpetual victims.” He anticipated the positive media coverage and the eagerness of “left-leaning politicians” to associate themselves with it. And he recognized the importance of the educational angle: “Most dangerous of all, the Pulitzer Center has packaged the Times’ project as a curriculum for students of all ages that will be disseminated throughout the country.” He also called on leaders within the black community to voice criticisms of the 1619 Project, lest the idea sink in further that “blacks are born inherently damaged by an all-prevailing racism and that their future prospects are determined by the whims of whites.”4

A final takeaway from Woods:

"There is an answer to the question, “Was America founded as a slavocracy?” – an answer in actual, documented history that does not depend on surmises or interpretative leaps. And the answer is, No, it was not founded as a slavocracy. It wasn’t founded as a slavocracy in Virginia in 1619, or at Plymouth in 1620, or in Philadelphia in 1776. We can perhaps conjure other dates from history that have some lesser claim to be “founding” events, but there is no plausible case for an American founding that makes “slavocracy” the beginning of the story or the main charter for what followed."

This is an incisive, well-written book that should be read.

[Clay Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important book I will read this year.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

In attempting to offer a book-length critique of the New York Times' 1619 Project, Peter Wood must have felt like he was pursuing a will o' the wisp. The Times, and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the project's originator, initially sold the project as the "real" story of American history, backtracked to it being true in spirit if not in all its particulars when challenged with its historical inaccuracies, and finally pronounced that it wasn't actually intended to be history at all, but an expression of activist journalism. It's ironic that an attempt to "reframe" American history immediately attempted to reframe its own history, but being a moving target has been a strategic success for the 1619 Project and has made applying the kind of critical analysis Wood attempts here a more difficult undertaking.

A couple points of clarification bear mentioning. First, the title of the book as it is currently listed on Goodreads is 1620: The True Beginning of the American Republic. As printed, the title is 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. Obviously, the working title for the book changed at some point shortly before printing, leading to the confusion. Additionally, of the three community reviews the book has received as of this writing, two are one-star reviews written by people whose claims to have read the book are obviously dubious. It should go without saying that there is nothing in the book, written by a man who describes his politics as "mildly conservative and traditionalist" and who states his belief that the common good "is best achieved by treating one another as individuals, not as representatives of identity groups" that could rationally lead to the accusation that he is operating from a "white supremacist" or "Nazi" foundation. It's a shame, and a little humorous, that star ratings on a book cateloging site have been ideologically weaponized, but such is life in our technologically-advanced society.

Moving onto the book itself, it can best be described as a historiography of the debates over the 1619 Project which, published in August 2019, posits that the arrival of African slaves at the Jamestown settlement in Virginia marks the true beginning of America because "No aspect of the country...has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed." This bold statement, and the Times handling of the arguments and facts needed to support it, has generated much criticism, and Wood deftly summarizes the back-and-forth between critics and defenders of the project and its key claims (about which more momentarily).

To this, Wood adds some cultural commentary as well as a somewhat intriguing proposal that 1620, the Mayflower Compact, and the establishment of the Plymouth Colony mark the "true beginning of the American Republic," though in this reviewer's eyes 1776 remains the obvious starting point for the nation. His interspersing of these various elements throughout the book, bouncing between the present and different past eras, gives it an uneven quality that disrupts its overall cohesiveness. So, too, does his juxtaposition of more academic debates over historical fact and understanding with his more polemical (though not unjustified) criticisms of the 1619 Project and its promoters.

Wood's issue with the 1619 Project begins with the very foundation of its claims: that the arrival of African slaves at Jamestown marked the beginning of slavery on the continent, which would continue uninterrupted for two and a half centuries thereafter. But 1619, he notes, was decidedly not the first year that slavery existed in North America or the New World more generally. Before slaves arrived in the British colonies, the Spanish and Portuguese, despite the efforts of royalty and clergy, had already established the plantation slave system in their New World colonies, and before that native tribes had enslaved each other. It is unlikely that we will ever know the date that slavery was introduced to the continent, but given the prevalence of that malign institution throughout world history, it likely predated 1619 by millennia.

Further, Wood adds, the exact status of the 20-30 Africans brought to Jamestown is still unclear, historically speaking. He writes that "It is likely that they were considered slaves on board the pirate ship, but because slavery was not recognized by English common law, once the captives landed their status became fuzzy." He notes that in other British colonies, "slaves brought by outsiders were considered to be indentures with a life tenure of service," but that Virginia "had no system of slavery as such" and "the records show that many of the captives were, after a term of indenture, set free." Indeed, there is evidence that after earning their freedom, some captives were able to purchase land and slaves (or indentured servants) themselves, and were able to assimilate into colonial society to at least some degree up until the 1640s. Not all historians are agreed on these points, and any conclusions must be held lightly due to the paucity of detailed information, but at the very least the claim that 1619 marked the beginning of slavery as it came to be known later in the colonial period has significant problems.

Easier to rebut is Hannah-Jones' claim that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery in the face of what is alleged to have been a growing abolitionist movement in Britain. She backs this claim by observing that slavery is not explicitly condemned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and by overstating the state of abolitionism in Britain while simultaneously ignoring the growing abolitionist sentiment in the United States in the 18th century, a sentiment materially enhanced by the Declaration. That the first antislavery meetings in world history took place in America, and that the first government in world history to constitutionally prohibit slavery was an American state are facts that would seem to bear on Hannah-Jones' thesis, though she displays little awareness of them.

Wood notes the rebuttals on this topic of two respected liberal historians, Sean Wilentz and Gordon Wood. Wilentz argues that abolitionism in Britain was not nearly as influential as Hannah-Jones suggests, and at the time of the Declaration there was no popular movement to outlaw slavery in Britain's colonies. Readers of Edmund Burke may recall that he drafted a proposal for gradual emancipation in 1780, four years after the Declaration, which was not taken up by Parliament until 1792, and Britain did not ban slavery in its colonies until 1833. There would seem to have been little reason, then, for the Americans to have started a war in order to protect slavery, particularly when there was already staunch and growing opposition to the institution in America.

Gordon Wood even more trenchantly opposes Hannah-Jones' thesis, and his criticism was strong enough to cause the Times to backtrack a bit, arguing that instead of the preservation of slavery being a primary motivation for the American Revolution, it was one motivation among others for some of the colonists. But even the support for this claim falls flat. For instance, the Times' argument that the Dunmore Proclamation, which promised slaves freedom if they deserted the plantations and joined the British, came after popular sentiment had been stirred up against British policy to the point of actual shooting at Lexington and Concord, and therefore cannot serve as an convincing explanation for why the Revolution began. Similarly, the Somerset case, in which a slave bought in America was emancipated in England, did not cause the sensation the 1619 Project claims it did in fomenting anti-British sentiment. 

All of this information is useful to push back against Hannah-Jones' claims, and Times editor Jake Silverstein's attempt to rescue them by backtracking into vaguer territories. It is curious, however, that no mention is made of the fact that Jefferson did condemn slavery in the first draft of the Declaration. Or at least he condemned the British for introducing slavery to the colonies, listing among his complaints against the British king that "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating the most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither..."

Additionally, as Wood states, the principles of the Declaration were "aspirational" and "transcendent," and "summoned Americans to try harder and for later generations to go further in seeking their fulfillment." They enunciated "a simplified and pure vision of how things will be, not a description of how things [were]." The 1619 Project, and other detractors of the founding era, see only hypocrisy in the wide discrepancy between those principles and the practice of slavery, which is unsurprising since many in the founding generation noted that same discrepancy. But Wood condemns the idea, expressed by Hannah-Jones, that "the United States is exceptional only in its hypocrisy, because the nation had both slavery and ideals that militated against slavery," particularly when those founding ideals contributed to the ending of slavery not only in America, but around the world.

Another claim that Wood challenges is that Abraham Lincoln was an unrepentant racist and that the Civil War was not a war to end slavery. The evidence given for these statements includes Lincoln's proposal to send freed slaves out of the country and his various public statements denying a commitment to the cause of racial equality. Much of the project's narrative along these lines is filled with hyperbole. For instance, Hannah-Jones depicts an 1862 meeting between Lincoln and five black leaders, at which Lincoln proposed sending the freed slaves to an island near Haiti, as one in which the attendees were "breathless" at Lincoln's suggestion. In fact, they had been briefed on what the president would discuss with them months before, and the debate over emigration itself was by this point decades old and found supporters and dectractors among blacks and whites alike. Further, there is some evidence that Lincoln staged the meeting as a publicity stunt to make white Americans more comfortable with the idea of emancipation, though this is conjecture.

Regarding a speech Lincoln gave during an 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas, in which he denied being in favor of equality between blacks and whites, Wood argues that this did not represent Lincoln's true feelings on racial equality, but rather represented his need to "thread the needle" between appealing to his northern constituents' antislavery and antiegalitarian sentiments. In this telling, Lincoln is said to be a master rhetorician, whose verbal sleight of hand hides his true egalitarianism. So, too, Lincoln's equivocations about slavery in a letter to newspaperman Horace Greeley and in the Emancipation Proclamation are said to be verbal posturing by a president trying to balance winning the Civil War, preserving the Union, ending slavery, and securing racial equality. Supporting this view is Lincoln's mutually respectful relationship with Frederick Douglass, and other statements affirming his belief that the Declaration's statement that "all men are created equal" applied equally to black and white, slave and free.

All of Lincoln's statements, writes Wood, need to be understood as "prudent political calculation." But ultimately, all of this is an undecided matter of academic debate, and Lincoln's motivations continue to be a source of study and disagreement. But Wood is correct to say that the danger in the 1619 Project's treatment of Lincoln is that by ignoring all that we don't know about him, and by decontextualizing or misrepresenting his statements, readers will draw conclusions about his legacy the firmness of which the scholarship doesn't support.

Wood deals with other aspects of the 1619 Project as well, notably its fallacy-laden claim that the totality of American capitalism has a direct tie to slavery, and its stated desire to alter the way history is taught in American classrooms. He closes by arguing that the 1619 Project is dangerous precisely because it seeks, by reducing all of American history to a single long arc of white supremacy, to destroy America by telling Americans that their country never really existed, certainly not as they and previous generations have learned. He does this while admitting that, historically, schools have inadequately taught students about the horrors of slavery, and proclaiming that Americans need to grapple with this baneful aspect of their history.

But, he adds, "Surely there are ways to incorporate a forthright treatment of slavery, racism, and the black experience into the story of America's rise as a free, self-governing, creative, and prosperous nation. The key to doing that is to put the pursuit of the ideals of liberty and justice at the center of the story, with ample acknowledgments of how hard the struggle has been and how imperfect the results." This contrasts with the 1619 Project which "tells us, in effect, that we live in the land of the unfree" and "replaces the effort to tell a truthful history of America, with its failures as well as its achievements, with a story of nothing but failure."

Wood believes that a middle course of sorts should instead be taken, one that does not ignore the evils of the past but also does not reduce the complexities of history to merely a tale of those evils. Failing to accomplish this task will, he cautions, leave Americans devoid of an understanding of themselves and the principles around which they can unify, and will make them easy prey for the insidious myths spun by ideologues bent on revolution.

Overall, Wood's is a mostly successful effort to counter the historical inaccuracies of the 1619 Project and incite a discussion about the importance of honest history to civic order. In addition to the lack of cohesiveness mentioned above, the book suffers somewhat from relying mostly on the exchanges between other scholars and the purveyors of the 1619 Project, most of which are readily available on the internet. One could argue that the time spent reading this book would just as well be spent reading the actual exchanges.

That said, Wood does add enough interesting perspectives himself to make reading the book a worthwhile endeavor. I am almost inclined to give it three stars - but I may as well join with the crowd and weaponize my rating, so four stars it is.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book that outlines many of the plain factual errors of "The 1619 Project" including the existence of slavery in 1619 Virginia and the importance of slavery and cotton in the American economy.

Stated concisely, the slaves brought to Virginia in 1619 were likely grateful that the ship carrying them had been blown off course and did not take them to Veracruz, Mexico as intended. Slaves there were worked to death in silver mines. In Virginia in 1619, the law had no concept of chattel slavery and it is likely the people on that ship were taken as indentured servants and worked off their cost and were freed. It is quite possible that Anthony Johnson, who enters the record in 1621 as a servant on a Virginia farm, was one of those on the White Lion. He was freed, married, bought a plantation, and eventually owned African slaves of his own and even sued and won a case in Virginia courts against a white neighbor. You won't hear a word about Anthony Johnson from the 1619 Project.

Likewise, the book sets out the economic case against the importance of cotton and planation slavery to American capitalism. Basically, slavery makes a few planation owners wealthy, but everyone around it loses economically. Slavery is damaging to economic progress.

The book makes its case briefly, but usefully points to other resources and I found myself looking at magazine articles and papers referenced in it for more of the details that I had been hoping for when I bought the book. This book is less truly a history than a guidebook to other sources.

Very important work, however, and I recommend it.

[Isaac · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is indeed a critical response to 1619. It takes a brief aside to advocate for a version of the American story that begins in 1620 with the signing of the Mayflower Compact, but the vast majority of this book is spent attacking the 1619 project from all different angles.

Before I get into the attacks it's worth mentioning that the positive portions of this book, where he describes the Mayflower Compact and the meaning he derives from grounding the American story there and contrasts that with the meaning he sees 1619 deriving from the landing of the White Lion, were the best of what this book had to offer in my opion.

In terms of criticism some of it seemed a bit ad hominem and petty. He spends a lot of time attacking Nikole Hannah-Jones directly via tweets and quotes. Things like calling herself the Beyonce of journalism are stupid but not really relevant, things like doing dozens of speaking engagements about 1619 with only like-minded individuals (Wood seriously categorizes everyone she's spoken with since the projects launch) is a bit more damning IMO for someone who describes the project as "Starting a conversation".

In this category I'd also place Wood's criticism of the New York Times. He's up their ass for putting too many resources into hyping and advertising a project, going as far as to hire a celebrity to stand in the ocean and play the video during the Oscars. He analyzes the font they apparently developed for the project and gets up their ass about that. He's up their ass for daring to allow journalists to encroach on the sacred turf of historians. Again a few hits landed here like specific accounts of historians being consulted, raising concerns and being brushed aside.

Wood also attacks the substance of the project as well, picking a few specific essays or claims and devoting a section to each. The ones i can remember were the claim that the revolutionary war was fought for slavery, the claim that Lincoln was a racist and a the article about American capitalism being founded on slavery. Some of these arguments seemed to boil down to "most serious Historians think...", but a lot of the arguments are very sharp and/or brought some interesting information to muddy the narratives in stimulating ways.

The book concludes with a sort of metahistory of slavery in history text books which was interesting and I think meant to be a jab at the educational material 1619 provides, that didn't quite land for me.

I'm glad I read this book, it was worth it just to relearn about the Mayflower Compact, but I suspect it will be dated fast. I wish it had stayed above some of the pettier criticism and spent a little more time in the meat of the arguments made by 1619.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book clearly exposes the intellectual dishonesty of the 1619 Project. This is a good source for any students who have teachers using 1619 Project resources to “teach” history.

Here’s a good podcast interview with Peter Wood, President of the National Association of American Scholars and author of “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project” https://overcast.fm/+EVU8bDBCA

Several prominent historians have written about the mismatch between historical fact and the 1619 project, including Sean Wilentz and Gordon Wood, among others. See two examples here:
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...
2. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019...

[Battle Armanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to contain really interesting, critical information concerning the 1619 Project as well as various aspects of early America. That being said, the book was incredibly repetitive and constantly bashed on 1619. If the book was more focused on the information, I would have given it a much higher score. I know this was meant to be a response to the 1619 Project, but I found myself skipping over large diatribes about Nikole Hannah-Jones, the other contributors or ideas explored because they were boring (and, again, repetitive). I will say that I did love how large the footnotes section was and that everything referenced was included, as a scientist, I love a good set of citations.

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good criticism of the 1619 project. I actually think there are better cases to be made against it and so I came away thinking the book was more modest than it needed to be.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clearly we need more books about racism in the U.S.A. that don't just make stuff up.
It would be good generally to have more discussion of facts as opposed to opinions. This author makes a big deal about doing that and does manage to do it a bit, but then ruins the whole thing by spending an awful lot of time making political opinion statements about the motives of individuals and groups. If you're sticking to the facts, then stick to the facts of the matter.
Also, the book spends a lot of time on the Mayflower, which I thought was neither here nor there for this discussion.
The good things:
-The author admits that for most of American history, American history textbooks have been obviously racist. He also points out that average Americans are woefully ignorant of history in general. I feel like this should have been earlier in the book, and more central to the whole discussion.
-The author lists factual errors in the 1619 Project, for example with the idea that that American War for Independence was mainly about the continuation of slavery. The Times actually back-pedaled on this eventually.
-The author documents that a historian engaged by the Times to fact-check "1619" before publication told the Times that it was seriously flawed, but she was ignored. She eventually wrote a whistleblower piece in Politico that caused a scandal. I would recommend reading that article because she also criticizes the historians behind this 1620 book. But she doesn't just call people biased and then reject all their arguments. She explains her take with examples. https://www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Other books to consider:

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
[book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
A People's History of the United States
How to Be an Antiracist
Detroit: An American Autopsy
The Fire Next Time
|211888]

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book 5 stars primarily because it is so necessary. "The 1619 Project" is more of a symptom of the current state of our culture than a cause, but it certainly is contributing to its decline. It's not the subject matter of "The 1619 Project" that is the problem, it's the deception and the distortion of the historical record that makes it so dangerous. When history becomes a tool for social engineering instead of a way for us to learn the truth about our past, tyranny can't be far off.

I commend Peter Wood for setting the record straight. He makes cogent arguments and provides adequate evidence to defend his claims. This is an important, readable, and interesting volume. My only quibble with the book is that I wish he would have provided more footnotes in the Preface, so I would have more references to good resources on pre-Columbian America, an area of study I would like to learn more about.

I pray that "The 1619 Project" is destined for the ash heap of history, while initiatives like "1776 United" will rise from that ash. "1620" just lit the match.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A significant reexamination of American history has been launched by the New York Times 1619 project and Wood provides a useful discussion bringing in a wide variety of historians to comment on the project. Normally historians debating history would be confined to the academic world. By offering this new interpretation of America’s founding principles on the pages of the New York Times, the paper has created a wider public debate. Woods book helps us understand how historians think and the intellectual rigor that goes into understanding history. Very timely. Highly recommend.

[Eric C 1965 · Rating 4 out of 5]

History > Propaganda.

HNJ <<< PWW.

Read this if you think the 1619 Project is important...

[Moses · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, narrowly-focused, and moderate argument that 1620, specifically the Mayflower Compact, is a better and more reliable beginning of the "American story," than the landing of Africans, who may have been enslaved or indentured, on the Virginia coast in 1619.

Wood spends a lot of time on pointing out the journalistic mendacity of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the NYT editorial staff, and others involved in the 1619 project. His analysis of the Mayflower Compact could have been stronger, and I think it would have been if Wood was a historian rather than an anthropologist. For more on what made the Pilgrims special, see Nick Bunker's "Making Haste from Babylon."

[Malachi Ege · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive counter argument to the well known Times project: The 1619 Project.
Where the 1619 Project failed to provide scholarly researched and accurate historical data, Wood goes into great length to ensure his argument is backed by historical scholars and well sourced information.
Before making a judgment on this book you must understand one very important detail. Wood is NOT arguing that the history of slavery is not important or accurate. He is also NOT arguing that there isn’t a need for a realignment of the role Blacks played in American history. What he IS arguing, is that many of the claims made in the Times 1619 Project are present as historical fact when the reality is they are opinions presented by journalists not historians. He cites MANY historians, including many who specialize in the history of early American slavery and early American Black history, who have found fault with some of the claims made by the 1619 project.
I found it to be a levelheaded, concise, accurate, and well written book that is a must read if you’ve read the Times original 1619 Project.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a lover of U.S. history I was already disturbed by the 1619 Project prior to reading this book. This book fairly examines its main points, its flaws, and its champions and what they hope to achieve—an historical narrative that has everyone believing that the United States was founded in 1619 as a slavocracy, that the Revolution was fought to preserve it, that the Civil War wasn’t fought to abolish it, and that Lincoln was a racist. The end game to all this is reparations.

I share the author’s view that the 1619 Project is a bad thing to end up in schools’ curricula. I think it’s nonsense and dangerous. This false narrative will only cause more division. Slavery was a terrible thing that shouldn’t have happened, but it shouldn’t define the country. A terrible war was fought with it being the primary cause. I would think that there should be some credit given to the country for ending that awful institution.

Why would we want to teach children to hate their country? The truth is the truth, but the 1619 Project isn’t the truth.

[Rich · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written in response to The 1619 Project which was published in the New York Times Magazine in August 2019. One of the chief criticisms put forward is that The 1619 Project did not provide substantiating documentation for the claims that were made. Subsequently, Nikole Hannah-Jones released a book version in 2021 which provides numerous notes. I cannot address the adequacy of the provided references, but they do address the criticism at a high level.

While the author does refute some of the claims made by The 1619 Project, there are many other claims that are not addressed. A limited number of factchecking errors and criticism by historians are mentioned. The chapter addressing how well American history textbooks have addressed slavery and the role of Black Americans seems to support rather than refute the assertions made by the 1619 Project. Overall, this book did not offer sufficient evidence to counter the claims of The 1619 Project. I did not find it to be persuasive.

[Jonathan Shell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Backstory on the Author tells all.

Questionable Reasoning: Conspiracy Theories, Propaganda, Failed Fact Checks
Bias Rating: RIGHT
Factual Reporting: MIXED
Country: USA (44/180 Press Freedom)
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY

[Dave Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone who is interested in the true founding of this country, while de-bunking the lies of the 1619 project.

[Michael Kahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

A huge waste of time and blatant falsehoods. Instead of an objective critique of a public history piece this is just a partisan hatchet job.

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The 1619 Project is arguably part of a larger effort to destroy America by people who find our nation unbearably bad. The project treats the founding principles of our nation as an illusion, a contemptible illusion; in their place is a single idea, that America was founded on racist exploitation."

During and following my reading of this book, I wanted to see for myself what the 1619 Project was all about. I had not studied it prior and had only heard about it online and through the media. I visited their website, information published by the Pulitzer Center (the single organization that supposedly gives the project its credibility), and other articles favorable and critical to the project. Needlessly to say, it was shocking, and what I found corroborated, as far as I could tell, all the statements made by the author in this book. The core institutions of our nation were built on slavery, the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery, the fact that we incarcerate black Americans for crime is linked to slavery, etc etc etc. It's all there.

I also looked into Nikole Hannah Jones who, with the full backing of the New York Times and the Pulitzer Center developed the project. Jones is not a historian. She is not an expert or even a researcher of U.S. history by any stretch of the imagination. She isn't even an educator. She is a journalist and an activist. Nothing more. So, the fact that her project is being used to infiltrate the education of school children across the nation with the blessing of the Pulitzer Center and taught to them as historical fact is downright terrifying.

The author of this book, Peter Wood addresses the most concerning parts of the 1619 Project and studies and dismantles them piece by piece. He cites multiple top U.S. historians, including those who have a favorable view of the 1619 Project but are disturbed by the blatant lies and falsifications of historical facts that permeate the core parts of the project.

What I've Learned

The 1619 project is a collection of 10 parts or essays. The purpose of this book is to cover 2 of those 10 parts, specifically those two parts that claim that America is a "slaveocracy", that all whites today benefited in some form or another from slavery, that a primary reason for the Revolutionary War and the declaration of independence from England was to preserve the institution of slavery, that Abraham Lincoln was a racist, that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, and that America's economic successes are a direct result of slavery.

The 1619 Project is a collection of various writings by highly "educated" activists. It was funded by none other than the hyper-political and biased New York Times which at one time was a highly regarded and trusted news paper. What clout remains lends legitimacy to the project. We all know that the Times recently faced bankruptcy due to massive drops in readership (due in part to trustworthiness but also the digital age) before being saved through massive contributions by "investors" and new ownership to whom the Times is now beholden. One can imagine the motivations and agendas of these investors and new shareholders, but there is little doubt that what little honesty and journalistic integrity remained at the Times went out the window.

The 1619 Project is presented as a "new" look into U.S. history. 'A new history about America never heard before!' Apparently, this generates interest and leads some to believe that the authors of the project somehow uncovered brand new historical truths unknown until now. Perhaps, this is because the "new history" taught in the 1619 project is almost entirely fabricated and false to the core.

In truth it is little more than an attempt to use and exploit black Americans with poisonous racialist identity politics through revisionist history. Black Americans are taught that they are victims of a historically racist nation of whites, that they will remain a perpetual underclass with limited potential unless they let, their new benefactors (politicians and activists who espouse the ideas of the project) force America to restore to them that which the privileged whites have stolen from them for centuries.

So, why would some historians support the 1619 Project and even endorse the falsification of history?

There is a rising consensus among many education officials, teachers, and politicians that teaching factual history is subordinate to pushing for radical progressive social change and that knowingly misrepresenting history to school children in America is justified. Thus, the end justifies the means.

What's very troubling to me is that it clearly appears that Nicole Hannah Jones, The New York Times, The Pulitzer Center, and the writers of the 1619 Project are not motivated by an overwhelming desire to improve the lives of black Americans, or an improvement in race relations, or to even restore to blacks what was "robbed" from them through generations of slavery and Jim Crow laws despite their claims. It seems they are motivated by personal prestige, power, and money. Nicole Hannah Jones has made this clear following the publishing of the project. She stated that her project goal is to secure what the left refers to as "reparations". But I believe her true goals are far more sinister than this. She and her cohorts make it appear that their goals are to bring monetary compensation to the black community. In truth, I believe that she and others hope to use this project to exploit the black community for personal gain and enrichment which is precisely what happened with the so-called "Black Lives Matter" movement.

Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter gained notoriety by championing the rights of the downtrodden black Americans. They staged massive protests, demanded defunding of the police, screamed for justice and demanded reparations. In turn, they benefited from hundreds of millions in donations, including massive donations from dozens of "well meaning" U.S. businesses such as Amazon and Coca Cola. Did all this money and all their antics serve the black community? Well.... no. Not at all. In fact, Black Lives Matter exacerbated race relations in America, they unfairly demonized white people making millions of white Americans defensive, and contributed NOT to ending racism, but inflaming it! Then what did they do with the millions in donations. The "leaders" of the movement indulged themselves in luxury items, cars, travel, and as we all now, multi-million dollar mansions. There is absolutely NO evidence that the Black Lives Matters movement benefited black Americans in any way whatsoever. It was nothing but a huge scam. The 1619 Project is no different.
I believe they are fully aware of the fact that if their goals are realized, race relations in America will worsen and racism will be worse than it ever has. I doubt the Pulitzer Center and Jones cares.

A few other falsifications in the 1619 Project

The 1619 Project employs a false narrative that European settlers introduced slavery to the Americas. Yet we know that slavery existed since the dawn of mankind around the world including in every single territory and land throughout the Western hemisphere. Slavery was nothing new in the Americas. In fact, the nature of slavery employed by the Aztecs far exceeded in brutality that which was practiced by white slaveholders in the United States.

Also, it turns out that there is no historical basis that could confirm many of the assertions made in the 1619 project. Most of the project revolves around troubling isolated incidents hand picked to paint a disturbing picture that makes it appear as though America was built by slaves and founded to protect slavery. Anyone with a grain of common sense and any grounded knowledge of America's history would know that this is, of course, preposterous. However the creators of the 1619 Project do an excellent job at at making an emotional appeal to "Tell the Truth" about America's founding or.... their version of the "truth" that is based on lies and uses"facts" that are based on conjecture and theory rather than actual historical evidence.

The project is named after the year an English pirate ship, The White Lion, that landed in Jamestown with several African slaves (it has been argued they were actually indentured servants) on board. Those slaves were eventually sold and this was supposedly, as falsely claimed by The New York Times, when slavery in the America's began. It also claims that prior to this event, America did not exist and that this single event ushered in the birth of America. "America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. "

We are expected to believe that this constituted the birth of America and that the Mayflower, which brought no slaves and upon which was written the Mayflower compact, a civil body politick and document signed by the members of the Mayflower voyage which directly influenced the writing of the 1776 Declaration of Independence had nothing to do with the founding of America.

When top historians have confronted the authors of the 1619 project about the inaccuracies and false claims presented in their writings, their concerns were shrugged off with claims that their so-called "facts" were a "matter of interpretation". As of yet Nikole Hannah Jones, the Times, and other contributors to the project have never once satisfactorily addressed the concerns made by many historians regarding the falsehoods in the 1619 Project.

The 1619 project makes a complete disregard of the abolitionist movement and the valiant efforts and sacrifices made by millions of white Americans to end slavery. The author absurdly claims that black Americans were alone in their fight against racial injustice.

Jones' claims that Jefferson was a hypocrite falls flat on its face. Thomas Jefferson's words that "all men are created equal" transcended what was commonly accepted at the time . He was inspired at the time to write such words which led to the abolitionist movement and the fight for racial equality. Had he not written these words one can imagine how much more difficult it would have been to end slavery in America.

The 1619 project alleges without any evidence whatsoever that colonist's concern that England would abolish slavery in the colonies led to the revolutionary war. In truth, the US constitution and the Revolutionary War led to many people in the United States condemning slavery on moral grounds. This created a hotbed of anti slavery sentiment that existed only in the United States at the time. England was the top provider of slaves in the Caribbean colonies and depended heavily on trade from that region. Multiple historians wrote scathing responses and voiced criticisms against this false claim. The author discusses this in detail in chapter 5.

The author lists the primary 5 school districts and numbers of children in those districts who have already been exposed to 1619 Project propaganda during the 2019-2020 school year. That year, over a half million children have potentially already been exposed.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is unfortunate that Mr. Wood's book will do little to combat the expansion of The 1619 Project. As he states so well, how many hundreds of thousands or millions of children will be indoctrinated by The 161o Project curriculum compared to the thousand who will take the time to read his book.

Where America's history began is obviously subject to debate, i.e., was it St. Augustine in 1565, the day the Mayflower Compact was signed, or when. Are we talking about America the North American continent or America the nation. For me it began in 1776. All before that were preliminaries akin to the warmup sessions of a football game . . . but we each have our own opinions. However, I do not believe America's true history began when a pirate ship landed with slaves in 1619. Mr. Wood gives much scholarship to this argument. My heart cries for our children, grandchildren, and all our future generations that a defense of American history is even necessary but in today's cancel culture we had all best be educated on the reasons Mr. Wood wrote this book which centers around one of the uglier portions of American history.

[W. Whalin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Important Audiobook If You Care About History

Scholar Peter Woods in this audiobook for 1620, A CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE 1619 PROJECT, argues against the publication in August from the New York Times. The 1619 project new interpretation of American history from a racism and slavery emphasis and pushes this liberal and controversy viewpoint into the public schools.

Until a friend called this book to my attention, I had never heard of this controversy—but if you love history, 1620 is an important book. I was horrified at this publication, the sloppy handling of the facts and history from a respected newspaper like the New York Times (the 1619 project). Woods book is worthwhile listening for anyone who cares about the correct interpretation and teaching of American history—which should be everyone. I learned a great deal and highly recommend this book.

W. Terry Whalin is an editor and the author of more than 60 books including his latest 10 Publishing Myths, Insights Every Author Needs to Succeed .

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a new project and force in the corpus of those movements that, at core, are unified in their effect of whittling away the strands of commonality that bind us together as Americans--those founding principles, ideals, and values that help define what it means to be an American. The 1619 Project is the name of that new project, and this book presents a well written critique of not only the inaccurate facts contained within the works of that campaign, but also the planning of that project's works to be the backbone of US History curriculum in public schools.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives real historical insight into slavery in the American colonies and how it affected the nation in the United States. The historical background and original sources quoted show that slavery was not a factor in the beginning of the United States. It is an excellent read for our time and debunks the idea that America began in 1619 instead of 1776.

[Daniel Truelove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous Importance

This book is a must-read for anyone looking to intellectually combat the 1619 Project’s anti-historical, anti-white, racist motives. 1620 provides an in-depth look at the easily dismissible historical inaccuracies of the 1619 project in a very detailed, well-articulated way. Highly recommend.

[Sean Showalter · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this I had no respect for the New York Times or Nicole Hannah Jones. She’s a total con and race hustler. Her 1619 project is propaganda, and bunk history. Anyone who believes the 1619 project is completely dishonest with themselves. But I seriously doubt those people would even entertain this book as it will make them see how faulty their worldview is.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

When William Styron won the Pulitzer Prize for Confessions of Nat Turner and the novel was slated for a film, a group of Black scholars responded with an impassioned volume, William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Imagining Peter W. Wood response to the The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story to be something equally compelling, I read more of this book than I should have.

As a historian, I don't believe the 1619 Project gets everything right. I would argue that the English settler's determination to exploit and enslave is visible earlier, even during the second or third Roanoke colony expeditions (see Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony). Nevertheless, most historians will agree that the arrival of the first Africans to what became the United States is a key event at some level. However, Wood is an anthropologist, not a historian and his understanding of American history seems to be based on the whitewashed storytelling that was common to elementary school history textbooks of the early to mid-20th century.

For example, despite knowing that the Lost Colony and Jamestown came first, he focuses on the Pilgrims as the start of America. Never mind the Iroquois Nations and its alliance that pre-dated the arrival of Europeans and may have influenced the Constitution, but the Pilgrims weren't even the first Europeans in North America. Then, as if reading from the Mayflower Society's early dogma, he waxes on about the importance of the Mayflower Compact. Of course, this document was only for a small group, did not provide equality, and was not adopted by the later Puritan groups that came to America (see Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War). Unfortunately, the moment in history that Wood chooses to focus on is about as important as Plymouth Rock.

But it gets worse. Wood has the nerve to challenge whether or not the Africans brought to Virginia in 1619 were enslaved because they 1) were better off in Virginia than as slaves of the Spanish and 2) one or two might have eventually been freed after years of service, like an indentured servant. He is just wrong. These individuals were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, brought in ships to the New World, sold to planters in Virginia, and forced to work without pay for years. Pretty much the textbook definition of the Atlantic slave trade. Any credibility that Wood and this book had was gone once I read this section. If you think this wasn't about race, consider how the Virginians would have treated white men and women who survived pirates or a shipwreck. Would these individuals have been sold and forced to work? Or would they have been returned to their homeland?

Even if these first Africans were treated as indentured servants, it is not like that was a good position. Wood does not appear to know that indentured servants were generally poorly treated and were unlikely to survive their seven years of labor in early Virginia. That's because their masters wanted to get their investment out of the laborer and had no incentive for medical care, quality food, or the like. As far as that goes, most of the early settlers of Virginia were unlikely to survive, so it is not like these Africans were brought to paradise. Wood also reminds readers that Europeans did not bring slavery to Africa or the New World, meaning that 1619 could not possibly be that important. Ugg! I had to stop before he told me that slaves were happy and used to sing songs.

In short, rather than providing a nuanced and scholarly response to the 1619 Project, Wood pulls out an old-fashioned and very biased perspective of American history. Maybe his book got better; I'll never know because this was a big DNF for me. However, I am still waiting for 10 scholars to respond to the 1619 Project. We deserve a real conversation.

[Elise · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, I question Peter A. Wood’s credibility because he is a member of the National Association of Scholars, one of whose tenets is that they are “anti-multiculturalism.” That’s like being anti-internet. You may not like it, but it’s here and it’s here to stay. And Wood does seem anti-multicultural or anti any attempt to celebrate the contributions of anyone who is not a white male to our nation’s successes. While he makes a few good points in his criticism of the 1619 project, especially about Abraham Lincoln not being a racist and whose attempt to send African Americans back to Africa was a short lived political maneuver. I think it is important to get the historical facts correct, so his project is worthwhile. However, to suggest that the author of 1619’s critical claims about racism in America is an attempt to teach school children to hate America is ludicrous. His absolutist, black and white thinking, so to speak, never acknowledges that if we love our country we should look critically at it in order improve our faults moving forward in order to be the best we can be. Also, he might not have read the 1619 Project with full comprehension, especially the part about the author’s former sharecropper father flying the American flag proudly. He claims that Nikole Hannah-Jones’ father understood true American ideals as she herself doesn’t. Hannah-Jones explains that point completely differently from the way he presents it in his book, saying that her father understood his crucial role as an African American in building our nation. That is why he proudly flies the American flag. The point was lost on Wood. While there may be some good information here, I think I need to read a more credible critic of the 1619 Project. According to Wood, there are many.