The 1619 Project Puts Slavery And Its Aftermath In The Spotlight

The New York Times Magazine published hundreds of thousands of extra copies of its special 1619 Project issue (August 18, 2019),which commemorated the year 1619 when the first shipload of enslaved Africans landed in the British colony of Virginia.

Unfortunately, despite its distribution at schools, libraries, and museums, I was unable to obtain a copy. It wasn't until three days ago that I found a damp copy of the issue in a Little Free Library kiosk on Saint Nicholas Avenue in Harlem. (It had been raining that day. I went home later and dried the issue on my living room radiator.)

Finding that copy was like finding a pot of gold or the holy grail. I could now read, if I chose, the magazine issue and the book it spawned, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (One World/ Penguin Random House, 2021) side by side. (I bought the book at the now-closed Target store in East Harlem in June of this year.)

Both the magazine and the book place slavery, considered America's "original sin," at the root of inequality and injustice in every aspect of American life.

The book will no doubt be among the many books banned and demonized in places like Florida and Texas. But, as the magazine issue's introduction states: "American history cannot be told truthfully without a clear vision of how inhuman and immoral the treatment of black Americans has been. By acknowledging this shameful history, by trying hard to understand its powerful influence on the present, perhaps we can prepare ourselves for a more just future."

The 1619 Project, the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine staff writer, is also the subject of an original series on the streaming service Hulu. I'm looking forward to seeing it if and when it becomes available as a DVD set.

The Underground Railroad Ran North And South

Until I started reading biographer Charles J. Shields's book, Lorraine Hansberry, The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun (Holt, 2022), I thought all black fugitive slaves fled to freedom on the Underground Railroad in only one direction--north to Canada.

In fact, there were fugitive slaves who fled to Mexico via the Underground Railroad. Here is what Shields has written about the journey south of the border:

"During the years of American slavery, the Underground Railroad went south as well as north. The southern route crossed into Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829 for economic reasons. The farthest point on the escape route was the 'Freedom Station' located in Mazamitla, Jalisco, roughly sixty miles south of Ajijic [a village]. Some of the campesinos bringing their farm goods into Ajijic  [during Hansberry's trip there] were descendants of escaped slaves from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama."

Happy Juneteenth 2020

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved blacks in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior.

Recently various states, municipalities, and companies have designated Juneteenth as a holiday. It may even become a national holiday.

In Ben Carson's Mind, African Slaves Were Immigrants

Ben Carson, the new secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, may need to bone up on American history, especially that part dealing with slavery.

Carson told a roomful of federal employees, presumably all of them employed at HUD, that "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they, too, had a dream that one day their" descendants "might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land."

A Washington Post report, published in the daily free paper amNew York (March 7, 2017) noted that his comments provoked "an uproar on social media."

It seems that Carson is unaware that an immigrant is someone who chooses to leave one country to settle somewhere else.The African slaves who were brought to America didn't have that option. Therefore they were not immigrants.