6 things I learned reading The 1619 Project
Created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, this book provides a narrative of US history that centers the legacy of slavery and how it is ingrained in our modern history.
Why I read this book
I saw Nikole Hannah-Jones interviewed on The Daily Show about the book and expressed an interest in it. My boyfriend, noting my interest, got me it for Christmas 2021.
It’s been sitting on my bedside table since we moved in together, so figured it should be the first book I read this year.
Why this post
Growing up, I thought of my US history education as progressive. My teachers didn’t shy away from introducing us to texts that highlighted the racism embedded in our history.
But at the end of the day, all of those texts (at least the ones I can think of) were written by white people. As the cover of The 1619 Project states, the book is ‘a new American origin story’. I knew there was a lot to learn from this book that I would have never learned before.
So this post is to highlight 6 of the things I learned reading this book that I didn’t learn in school or anywhere else.
1. Lincoln originally called for Black people to leave the US after emancipation
Before the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln considered including in it the idea of ‘colonization’ — that once freed, enslaved people would leave the US and resettle in another country.
There was a group set up in 1816 dedicated to this idea, called the American Colonization Society (ACS).
The ACS is mentioned several times throughout the book, so it kept making me repeatedly think, ‘how was this not covered in school?!’
American Colonization Society (Wikipedia)
2. The Holy Week Uprising in 1968 was the greatest wave of social unrest since the Civil War
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. sparked a period of social unrest, leading to over 3,000 injuries and 43 deaths in April and May 1968.
King assassination riots (Wikipedia)
3. The 1785 Treaty of Hopewell stated that Cherokees would return enslaved people to the US
I learned a lot about the relations between white colonists/Americans and Native nations in school, but I had no idea how Black people factored into negotiations between the two.
The book mentions how some Black people were enslaved by the Cherokees, while others married into Native families.
Treaty of Hopewell (Wikipedia)
4. Maryland didn’t ratify the 14th Amendment until 1959
The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, states that all people born in the US are US citizens. This is the post-Civil War amendment which secured citizenship status for formerly enslaved people.
It was a requirement for former Confederate states to ratify the amendment to be admitted back into the Union. It wasn’t for Union states, which led to an example like Maryland, a Union state, not ratifying the 14th until nearly a century later.
5. Ocoee, Florida remained an all-white town for 5 decades following a lynching in 1920
When Mose Norman, a Black citizen, tried to exercise his right to vote in Ocoee, Florida during the 1920 presidential election, a 100-man white mob broke into the home of July Perry, where Norman sought refuge.
When Perry’s household tried to defend itself from the mob, a white man was killed, which led to reinforcements from other counties joining the mob.
The mob lynched Perry and subsequently murdered or drove out around 500 Black residents from the town.
6. White residents of Atlanta suburbs repeatedly voted against extending public transit from Atlanta into their neighborhoods to keep Black residents from moving in
The book mentions quite a few elections in the second half of the 20th century where residents voted down extending MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.
Sadly, even though these neighborhoods have become more diverse, they still have continued to vote against extending MARTA, with Gwinnett County voting down a proposal as recently as 2019.
Gwinnett County rejects MARTA expansion (The Southerner Online)
10 books in 2023
This is my first book recap as part of my 2023 goal to read 10 books this year.
Read my post on why I set this reading goal
Next book
I’m switching over to a content-focused book. I’m going to read The Connected Campus by Tracy Playle next.
