This is not an exhaustive review but simply a few of what stood out to me in reading The 1619 Project. I am not copying and pasting from any web site. I am literate enough to read a book and write my own words. Slavery did not begin in 1619. But aspects of American enslavement of Africans were unique. First, it was hereditary. The child of a slave was a slave. That was not the case in antiquity. Second, although English common law derived a child’s status from the father, in this case, the child’s status derived from the mother, using the law that applied to livestock: Who owns the cow, owns the calf. Under English common law, even children born out of wedlock had some rights and fathers had responsibilities for them. Status through mother line removed all paternal responsibility. It also removed a disincentive to rape. Not only would a man carry no responsibility for children forced on enslaved women through rape, they became his valuable property. As Thomas Jefferson put it, an enslaved woman who birthed a living child every two years was more valuable than an enslaved man who, once he could no longer work, left nothing behind. The legal right to rape enslaved people was established in two court cases. In one, an enslaved man raped an enslaved child and was charged with rape of a child under the age of 10, a capital crime. His enslaver argued that the law should not apply because the child was property. Raping an enslaved child made no more sense than raping a table or bolt of cloth. The man was released. In another case, a Missouri man, following his wife’s death, purchased a 14 year old girl named Celia for the purpose of rape. Over years of repeated rape, she bore two children and was pregnant with a third when she pleaded with him to let her be; she was pregnant and sick. When the rapist persisted, Celia fought him off, and in the struggle he was killed. Celia was represented by an attorney who argued that state law clearly said any woman could do whatever was necessary to defend herself against a rapist. The court decided that Celia was not a woman because she was property. Enslaved people were persons only in so far as they could themselves be charged with a crime; in all other respects they were things. Celia was convicted and hanged. Her two children became the property of the rapist’s heirs. Her case is detailed in the book Celia, A Slave¸ which I have read. I am aware that males are also raped. I consider it a weakness that this was not explored in the book. It is true that sex between men was a crime under English common law, but so were rape, murder, and kidnapping, all of which could legally be done to enslaved people. It is unrealistic to think that rape of males never happened. Perhaps future editions can cover this. The book was called “Project” for a reason, in that it is not a completion but a project that is expected to grow. It was the American slavery system that first codified the notion of “blackness” and “whiteness”. People of European descent called themselves English, Irish, French, etc. Those of African descent had lost ties to homeland and were collectively African. At first, wealthy colonials drew no distinction between indentured servants (mostly European) and enslaved people (African and indigenous). But after a revolt in which indentured servants and enslaved people united against their intolerable conditions was crushed, sharp lines were drawn between “races” including concomitant racial mythology. Small relative privilege convinced most Europeans that, no matter how bad their circumstances, they were at least not Black. As Lyndon Johnson noted centuries later in 1965, convince the lowest white people they are better than Black people and they will vote for and support measures that hurt them, as long as Black people are hurt more. The racial divisions were seen long after abolition, with Black workers excluded from unions and apprenticeships, for example, which enabled them to be used as strikebreakers – to the detriment of all workers. The Declaration of Independence, after its preamble, lists a series of grievances against the English crown, including the now obscure passage, “He has excited domestic insurrection amongst us”. As the colonists grew more strident in their demands, the crown offered freedom to any enslaved person who would fight for the king. Many self-emancipated and fought with the British. That was what Jefferson was referring to. Historians of the period believe that, were it not for slavery, the United States would have followed the path of Canada; control over its internal affairs but remaining in the British Empire. The “excitement” of enslaved people was the final trigger that pushed the colonists from reform to independence. Clearly, when Jefferson said all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights, he only meant men like himself. There is a lengthy chapter on sugar, a subject in which, being a baker, I am very interested. Sugar cane was first domesticated in New Guinea about 10,000 years ago, but as canes, once harvested, are highly perishable and the labor required to produce sugar from cane so intensive, sugar remained for centuries a luxury item for the very rich. Commercially viable sugar required large tracts of land and, due to severity and danger of processing, an enslaved work force. Only enslaved people would tolerate the conditions that were so hazardous most died after only a few years. Cotton is another chapter. Prior to commercial cotton production, clothing was made of linen or wool, both expensive. Flax takes time to grow and sheep must be fed and cared for between wool production. Like sugar, cotton required large land areas and an enslaved population to carry out the brutally hard work of picking and processing. At first, enslaved people could pick more than could be cleaned. The invention of the cotton gin (actually invented by an enslaved person whose name is now unknown; Eli Whitney, his enslaver, took the patent and proceeds) allowed large quantities to be harvested. Both sugar and cotton rapidly deplete soil. The crops drove the westward expansion of the United States, as land was stolen from the indigenous people and enslaved people chopped down forests for these cash crops. After emancipation, many argued that the formerly enslaved people were now free and on their own. To do anything for them would create a culture of dependence (sound familiar?) A large population of the formerly enslaved were penniless, homeless, illiterate. Many had no choice but to return to slave labor camps (that is what the book calls what are usually termed “plantations”). The promise of “forty acres and a mule” never materialized. The few enslaved people who received land had it taken from them with the fall of Reconstruction. (A good companion book is Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution by Philip Foner). Reconstruction offered, for the first time, a real hope of creating a multiracial democracy. Unfortunately the assassination of Lincoln, his replacement with pro-slavery Andrew Johnson, the fears of Northern capitalists of a racially unified workforce, led to the defeat of Reconstruction and a century of racist terror and reaction. The Fourteenth Amendment eliminated slavery but with the critical clause except as punishment for crimes. With the defeat of Reconstruction, Southern states passed “Black Codes”, laws that made a crime for Black people to do such things as loiter, be unemployed, actual or perceived rudeness to a white person, etc. A new slavery began, with men and some women worked in slave conditions due to these “crimes”. This is necessarily a very brief summary of hundreds of pages. Other chapters deal with medicine, church, music, policing, traffic, the complex relations between African Americans and Native Americans, and other issues. The book is not a hard read. It is long and at times uncomfortable but not difficult writing. The book mostly was praised for its rigorous scholarship and won a Pulitzer Prize. It also ruffled feathers among white people who don’t want to be uncomfortable. Trump, who did not read it, issued an executive order creating a “1776 Project” to write a more white-friendly history. A conservative antigay Christian group containing no actual historians threw together a “reply” in three weeks, full of good white people, happy darkies, and in America everyone willing to work hard can succeed. Apparently enslaved people didn’t work hard enough, or just didn’t have what it took to succeed, unlike Trump: a rich daddy. There were also criticism from some self-proclaimed Marxists that the book focuses only on racial and not on class divisions. Marx began the Communist Manifesto (yes, I have read it) with the famous line, “The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle”. I disagree with these criticisms. It stands to reason that a book about Black people would mostly talk about Black people. But the book also repeatedly draws the connection between class and race and how racial divisions have held back the entire exploited population. I sometimes wonder if those critics have also failed to read the book. None of these critics have challenged any facts in the book. When the book started being banned by people who never read it, Nikole Hannah-Jones predicted the book banning would be extended. She was, of course, correct, as schools and entire states are banning books on the Holocaust because it is too unpleasant, books about Martin Luther King, and anything having to do with sexuality or LGBTQ+ people. In the final chapter, Justice, Hannah-Jones writes . I concur.
