Zinn Education Project, December 8, 2019, Teaching with New York Times 1619 Project
In August, the Zinn Education Project team, like many educators in our network, scrambled to get copies of The 1619 Project.
The multiplatform effort by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times highlights the fundamental role slavery played in the United States’ development by commemorating the year in which the first enslaved Africans were brought to the new Virginia colony.
Featuring essays on slavery’s intimate entanglement with U.S. capitalism, health care, politics, cities, food, and music, as well as poetry and fiction by Clint Smith, Jesmyn Ward, Eve L. Ewing, and others, the 1619 Project persuasively affirms that the consequences of slavery — and the contributions of Black people — should be central to any story the United States tells about itself.
