New York Times 1619 Project: No One Year Unlocks Meaning of America

When did America begin? Well, the United States became a country in 1776 and drafted a constitution in 1787. Seems simple enough, right?

Yet many Americans remain unsatisfied with such an obvious answer. Last year, the New York Times gained wide attention with its claim that any account of America’s origins must begin in August 1619, when a Flemish privateer stopped near Point Comfort and sold “twenty and odd Negroes” to the colonists of Virginia. The Times’ 1619 Project went on to document the pervasiveness and cruelty of African slavery in the English colonies that became the United States, and its essays argued that the study of the American past should begin with the event that most fully explains the racism of the American present. Hence, it deemed 1619 America’s true “birth year.”

JT

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John G. Turner

John G. Turner is the author of They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty.

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When did America begin? Well, the United States became a country in 1776 and drafted a constitution in 1787. Seems simple enough, right?

Yet many Americans remain unsatisfied with such an obvious answer. Last year, the New York Times gained wide attention with its claim that any account of America’s origins must begin in August 1619, when a Flemish privateer stopped near Point Comfort and sold “twenty and odd Negroes” to the colonists of Virginia. The Times’ 1619 Project went on to document the pervasiveness and cruelty of African slavery in the English colonies that became the United States, and its essays argued that the study of the American past should begin with the event that most fully explains the racism of the American present. Hence, it deemed 1619 America’s true “birth year.”