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THE 1619 P W
e’ve all heard about the
Emancipation proclamation and the 13th amendment and quite a number of Americans now are familiar with the story behind it. Well, the 4th of July is a date that forever will remain instilled in our hearts for as long as we live in this country, or maybe, let’s look at the 1st of February, a day when President Truman urged all Americans to observe diligently and reflect on the price of freedom bought for this country. By now, I am quite sure that you see the trend of what I’m writing about, if not, read on. The year 1619 is not a year 50
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notable to most Americans and although in the recent past, these numbers have been said and recited over and over again, you’d be surprised, that even now, people still don’t have a clue what is going on. Those people who do know what the year stands for, are mostly a very tiny segment of those “who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth, or is it?” Were historians wrong? The 1619 Project is a project that has received a lot of criticism and even though these critics are yet to obstruct the project’s success, giants in the conservative world are beginning to forge a tactical and strategic response that might outflank the true purpose of the project;
reframing the country’s history. In August 1619, a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, in the cargo barrels it had around 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival marked the start of a barbaric system of chattel slavery. A system that would inflict hardship on the poor and innocent Africans rooted in their homes for the next 250 years. And so the story begins. Basically, the 1619 project was initiated by The New York Times Magazine in 2019 with the goal of re-examining
THE POWER IS NOW MAGAZINE | MARCH 2020
