1619’s Nikole Hannah-Jones called out for not knowing crucial date amid lecture on Civil War

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The principal author of the 1619 Project, a collection of essays that has been criticized by historians across the ideological spectrum for its inaccuracies, may lack familiarity with when the Civil War started.

In a tweet earlier this week as part of a longer discourse, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the New York Times-published material, wrote the following:

“We did not stop the expansion of slavery, and enslavers dominated the presidency, Senate and Supreme Court until 1865, when the North was reluctantly drawn into a war that ultimately ended slavery.”

Hannah-Jones subsequently conceded that the message was not expressed properly and there was nothing to see here.

“It was poorly worded, I meant until 1865 ended the war, which the North had been reluctantly drawn into. I realized people want to catch me up. I doubt anyone believes I do not know when the Civil War started. But, it is what it is.”

“The New York Times’ 1619 Project is a long-form collaboration that seeks to ‘reframe the country’s history’ by bringing slavery and racism to the forefront of the national narrative,” Fox News explained.

An analog to critical race theory, the basic premise of the much-hyped, politicized journalism endeavor is that 1619 – when slaves first arrived on our shores – rather than 1776 was the year of America’s founding.

Another key premise is that the American colonists allegedly sought independence as a way to maintain the abhorrent institution of slavery.

Despite its questionable scholarship, the 1619 Project has been incorporated into the American history curriculum of some school systems around the country.

Echoing many on the divisive left including failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, Hannah-Jones said during a recent “Meet the Press” appearance that “I  don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught.”

“I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science,” she also admitted, even though she teaches at Howard University and runs a journalism center there.

Liberal Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz is one of those researchers who have called out the 1619 Project, particularly Hannah-Jones’ lead essay.

He wrote, in part:

…As I would later confirm with the foremost scholars of the subject who know far more about the Revolution than I, there is no evidence of a single colonist expressing support for independence in order to protect slavery. The 1619 Project’s claims were based not on historical sources but on imputation and inventive mindreading…Indeed, at the time of the Revolution, there was considerably more in the way of anti-slavery politics in the colonies than in Britain proper. These are elementary facts…It required no advanced knowledge of American history to understand the perversity of The 1619 Project’s lead essay’s treatment of the Revolution. If it were a high school history paper, that discussion alone would have been grounds for failure…

 

Twitter is schooling Hannah-Jones’ on the “poorly worded” historical miscue. Here is just a sample:

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