Nikole Hanna-Jones: 1619 Project, “Preface” Notes and Summary by Nikole Hanna-Jones
Nikole Hanna-Jones: 1619 Project, “Preface” Notes and Summary by Nikole Hanna-Jones
p. xviii: Author makes the point that between the Civil War and MLK, Black people were invisible. 100 years of silence. She talks about exposure to black and African history in school.
p. xix: Black enslaved people came to the New World before the Mayflower, which came in 1620.
p. xx: Author sees the loss of African American experience in the US as an intentional erasure. There has been a …Ira Berlin has contributed to the recent revisionist history of slavery and its role in American society. Berlin’s work has not influenced the non-specialist public.
p. xxii: So, this project coming at the 400th anniversary of 1619, is Hanna Jones attempt to “force a confrontation,” with our past. Here is probably the most controversial part of the book, reframing US history as starting in 1619. She is not asserting that this frame is a correct one. She is proposing a thought experiment, which relativizes…The NYT backed the project.
p. xxvi: She writes with glorious simplicity and accuracy.
p. xxviii: Hanna-Jones expanded the original project into book form.
p. xxix: Because the legacy of 1619 lives on in so many of our current experiences, Hanna-Jones feels justified in calling 1619 the beginning of the American story.
p. xxx: Americans look to the Revolutionary War period as the most emotionally rooted aspect of American history.
Excursus: Before we make the charge that our forebears have altered American history in a pernicious way we need to compare how other societies deal with their own histories. Apart from the US experiment is there an example of direct falsification of history that has led to bad outcomes. Put differently, is revising history, correcting it always a beneficial effort? Put differently again, is an idealized history ever beneficial? Certainly, the Bible is largely idealized history. Should students ever be taught history? Is it possible for the idealized history ever to be better than the revised history. Who is writing about this?
p. xxxiii: Dubois, not knowing about Black kingdoms in Africa.
