The 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory in North Carolina

The 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory in North Carolina David Steven Cohen In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine published “The 1619 Project”, an attempt to retell American history from the perceptive of slavery and the African American experience. The premise of the project was to consider 1619, the year that the first slave ship arrived in Virginia, rather than 1776, the date of the Declaration of Independence, as the birth date of America. “The goal of the 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering that it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year,” wrote Jay Silverstein, the editor of the New York Times Magazine. “Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.” Jake Silverstein, “Why We Published The 1619 Project” (December 20,2019), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/magazine/1619-intro.html The publication consisted of ten essays, poems, and fiction from a variety of authors. The idea for the project came from Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for The Times. Ms. Hannah-Jones was born in Waterloo, Iowa, to an African-American father and a white mother who was Czech and English descent. She attended an all-white high school as part of a voluntary desegregation busing program. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in History and African-American Studies from the University of Notre Dame, she attended the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media as a Roy H. Park Fellow. She began her journalism career at the Raleigh News and Observer, and then moved to Portland, Oregon, where she wrote for The Oregonian. Between 2008 and 2009 she traveled to Cuba with a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Journalism. She joined the nonprofit news organization ProPublica based in New York City. She began working for The New York Times in 2016. The following year she won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. In 2020 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary based on the 1619 Project. The Pulitzer Center in June 2020 published a Curriculum Guide based on the 1619 Project for grades K through 12. In December 2019, twelve scholars from major universities wrote a letter to Jake Silverstein. The scholars noted that it was not their purpose “to question of the significance of slavery in the American past.” However, As historians and students of the Founding and the Civil War era, our concern is that The 1619 Project offers a historically-limited view of slavery, especially since slavery was not just (or even exclusively) an American malady, and grew up in a larger context of forced labor and race. Moreover, the breadth of 400 years and 300 million people cannot be compressed into single-size interpretations; yet, The 1619 Project asserts that every aspect of American life has only one lens for viewing, that of slavery and its fall-out. “America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One,” insists the lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones; “American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation,” asserts another by Matthew Desmond. In some cases, history is reduced to metaphor: “How Segregation Caused Your Traffic Jam.” History News Network (January 26, 2020), https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174140 Mr. Silverstein refused to publish the letter, but he did allow the History News Network to publish with his refutation of some of the details in the letter.   But when Silverstein received another letter from five distinguished professors, including Victoria Bynum of Texas State University, James McPherson and Sean Wilentz of Princeton University, James Oakes from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Gordon S. Wood of Brown University, he did agree to publish it. They pointed out some of the factual errors in the publication, which “suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” For example, “the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain ‘in order to ensure slavery would continue.’ This is not true.” Another distortion is the claim that “for the most part,” black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “alone.” Still other material is misleading. The project criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s views on racial equality but ignores his conviction that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed universal equality, for blacks as well as whites, a view he upheld repeatedly against powerful white supremacists who opposed him. The project also ignores Lincoln’s agreement with Frederick Douglass that the Constitution was, in Douglass’s words, “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” Instead, the project asserts that the United States was founded on racial slavery, an argument rejected by a majority of abolitionists and proclaimed by champions of slavery like John C. Calhoun. “We Respond to the Historians Who Critiqued The 1619 Project: Five historians Wrote to us with their Reservations. Our Editor in Chief Replies.” New York Times. Com, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html?searchResultPosition=2 The historians asked The Times for issues prominent corrections of the errors and distortions from any materials to be used in the schools and all future publications. Mr. Silverstein’s response was to reject any notion that the project was driven by ideology rather than historical understanding and rejected the request for corrections. He admitted that neither he nor Ms. Hannah-Jones are historians, but, he says, as journalists they are “trained to look at current events and situations and ask the question: Why is this the way is?” He notes that The Times assembled numerous scholars of African-American and related fields to consult on the project. As the five letter writers well know, there are often debates, even among subject-area experts, about how to see the past. Historical understanding is not fixed; it is constantly being adjusted by new scholarship and new voices. Within the world of academic history, differing views exist, if not over what precisely happened, then about why it happened, who made it happen, how to interpret the motivations of historical actors and what it all means. Ibid. Silverstein defended Hannah-Jones’ claim that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” He quotes a 1772 decision of the British High Court in Somerset v. Steward in which the court declared it was unlawful for slave brought to England, who escaped and was recaptured, to be sold to Jamaica, because chattel slavery was not supported by English common law. While the decision did not affect the colonies directly, it was widely reported in America. He also cites the Dunmore Proclamation of 1775 in which the British colonial governor of Virginia offered freedom to any slave who escaped and joined the British Army. He quotes historian Jill Lepore, who wrote that the Dunmore Proclamation “tipped the scales in favor of American independence.” But does this make the defense of slavery “one of the primary reasons” for independence. There were 28 charges against the King of England made in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wanted to include a 29th blaming the King for the introduction of slave trade, but it was eliminated from the final draft. Silverstein also defended Ms. Hannah-Jones against being unfairly harsh on Abraham Lincoln. Admittedly, in an essay that covered several centuries and ranged from the personal to the historical, she did not set out to explore in full his continually shifting ideas about abolition and the rights of black Americans. But she provided an important historical lesson by simply reminding the public, which tends to view Lincoln as a saint, that for much of his career, he believed that a necessary prerequisite for freedom would be a plan to encourage the four million formerly enslaved people to leave the country. What Silverstein fails to mention that a significant number of freed African-Americans agreed with Lincoln and voluntarily went back to Africa to found the country of Liberia, and in the early twentieth century Marcus Garvey embraced the Back-To-Africa Movement. No matter what a person may think about The 1619 Project as a publication, the effort to incorporate it into the teaching of history in the schools has had the effect of politicizing the teaching of history from the point of view of only one ethnic group. The first two slides of their proposed curriculum further the argument that it is an exercise in ideology rather than critical thinking by suggesting that she has the only truth and that previous curricula are “committing educational malpractice.” The third slide has the following heading: “The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history, making explicit how slavery is the foundation on which this country is built. For generations we have not been adequately taught this history. Our hope is to paint a fuller picture of the institution that shaped our nation.” “Supplemental Broadsheet” from The New York Times https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/18maglabs_1619_issue_shipped_0.pdf The Reading Guide for The 1619 Project Essays, which is published on the Pulitzer Center’s website, offers a preview of the problem of basing a curriculum on the Project. The index below offers an example of guiding questions based the 18 essays included in The 1619 Project from The New York Times Magazine. It has an except from Hannah-Jones’ essay, not from a primary source, and asks the following leading questions: 1. How have laws, policies, and systems developed to enforce the enslavement of black Americans before the Civil War influenced laws, policies, and systems in years since? 2. How has activism by black Americans throughout U.S. history led to policies that benefit all people living in the U.S.? Reading Guide for The 1619 Project Essays, https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/reading_guide_for_the_1619_project_essays_0.pdf As a historian with some experience in writing lessons plans and Core Curriculum Content Standards in New Jersey, I think this is an example of the wrong way to teach history. Rather than reading and analyzing primary sources, this asks the student to comment on only one point of view, i.e., that of Nikole Hannah-Jones. It would be far better for the students to read the Declaration of Independence and Samuel Johnson’s Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress and to comment on what is mentioned and not mentioned in each of these documents. A related issue is the attempt to impose the single point of view that the slavery was the cause of the Civil War. While this may be the opinion of most historians today, there is a value in having students evaluate and criticize different points of view on powers within federalism of the federal government versus states’ rights. This would include reading and debating the Virginia Resolution, written by James Madison, and Kentucky Resolution, written by Alexander Hamilton, both in 1798 that proposed that states had the right declare unconstitutional or “nullify” the Alien and Sedition laws passed under President John Adams; The Resolutions of Harford Convention of 1814 in which several New England states asserted that the actions of the federal government during the War of 1812 were “void” and “to interpose” their authority against these actions; the South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification of 1832 in which South Carolina, supported by Vice President John C. Calhoun, declared “null and void” the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 against President Andrew Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification, in which he threatened to send in federal troops to enforce the tariffs; the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of the Carolina from the Federal Union of 1860 versus Abraham Lincoln’s statement of the cause of the Civil War in his Second Inaugural Speech of 1865. In April 2021, Nicole Hannah-Jones was appointed to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Housman School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. While previous holders of the Chair were granted tenure, Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year contract with the option for review with tenure. The dean of the School of Journalism, Susan King, touted Hann-Jones’s credentials as having been awarded a McArthur “genius” fellowship and having receive a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his introductory essay. The faculty of the School of Journalism recommended that she be granted tenure, but the Board of Governors, most of whom were appointed by the Republican-controlled legislature decided to delay a vote because of questions as to whether Hannah-Jones had any prior teaching experience. When it became known the Walter T. Housman, Jr., the publisher of the Arkansas Democratic Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas, who endowed the School of Journalism with $25 million, had written to the members of the Board of Governors in opposition to granting Hannah-Jones tenure, Hannah-Jones threatened to sue the university, and students and faculty began to protest. Sean Wilentz, who had previously criticized Hannah-Jones’ scholarship, wrote an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, saying that the Board of Governors should follow the faculty recommendation and grant Hannah-Jones tenure. It should be noted, however, that the Board of Governors had every right to make an independent decision in the tenure process. Housman never threatened to withdraw his funds from the journalism school. In exchange for the grant, the School of Journalism agreed to name the school after him and post his core values on the walls of the school. The values included drawing a distinction between news and opinion with impartiality, which he defined as “reporting, editing, and delivering, the new honestly, fairly, objectively, and without personal opinion or bias.” On June 30th, the day before she was about to begin her appointment, the Board of Governors held an emergency meeting and decided to grant her tenure. However, a few days later in an interview with Gayle King on CBS-TV, Hannah-Jones announced that she was refusing the position at UNC in favor of a professorship at Howard University. In the interview she mentioned that the New York Times had “clarified” (not corrected) the text of the 1619 Project to say that “one of the primary reasons” for the American Revolution was that “some of the colonists” had decided to break away from the British Empire was the defense of slavery. But this was nor merely a “clarification”; it was an assertion made with no supporting evidence. The Hannah-Jones controversy was reported as another example of racism at the University of North Carolina, which he been criticized for a deal it made with the Sons of Confederate Veterans to pay $2.5 million to take possession of the statue known as Silent Sam on the university campus. The statue was dedicated in 1913 ty the United Daughters of the Confederacy to the alumni of the university who fought for the South during the Civil War. At the dedication of the statue, Julian Carr, a Civil War veteran and postwar industrialists, bragged about his beating a “Negro wench” after, he said, she disrespected a “Southern lady” on the streets of Chapel Hill. However, there is another way to view the Hannah-Jones controversy. In 1987 Republican President Ronald Reagan repealed the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” under which the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) required holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues in a manner that was “honest, equitable and balanced.” The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine enabled the rise of right-wing cable television networks such as Fox News that during the Trump administration fostered conspiracy theories and other forms of “fake news.” In reaction, other cable television networks such as CNN and MSMBC began broadcasting one-sided refutations of false assertions made of Fox News and other right-wing television networks. Housman’s statement of core values was a through-back to the Fairness Doctrine, but some of the faculty at UNC’s journalism threatened to remove Housman’s core values from its walls. In August 2021 Susan King resigned as dean of the school of journalism. The Hannah-Jones controversy took on new life with the rise of the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the public schools. Critical Race Theory (or CRT) has been traced back to the 1970s and 1980 in the writings of the Harvard legal scholar Derrick Bell. While not using the term CRT, Bell argued that contrary to the Liberal interpretation of American legal history, which claimed a progression from Reconstruction after the Civil War to the so-called Second Reconstruction during the Civil Rights Movement after World War II. Bell argued the racism was more entrenched in American society, first by the share-cropper and convict labor system after Reconstruction and second by the mass incarceration of Blacks after the Civil Rights Movement. His ideas were expanded in the 1990s by his students at Harvard, especial Kimberlé Crenshaw and others, under the rubric of Critical Race Theory. In this context CRT became associated with “systematic racism” in the criminal justice system and “white privilege” in society at large. One of the assertions is that there was a loop-hole in the Thirteenth Amendment that banned slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” However, this refers to imprisonment for crimes of which the person was “duly convicted.” In July 2020, a Conservative political activist named Christopher F. Rufo exposed a slide show from a corporate sensitivity session in Seattle, Washington, and based on this he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. Subsequent to his appearance, Rufo was invited to Washington to confer with President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who was a former Republican Congressman from North Carolina. As a result of that meeting, President Trump decided to initiate in September 2020 a 1776 Commission to support “patriotic education” in the schools. The Commission had no historians specializing in American history. The chairman of the commission was Larry Amn, president of conservative Hillsdale College and the co-chair was Carol Swain, a former conservative law professor at Vanderbilt University. The Commission issued its report on January 18, 2021, two days before the inauguration of President Joe Biden. The report restated the Republic agenda in education, namely a focus of reading, writing, and math, and instilling “patriotism.” The primary duty of schools is to teach students the basic skills needed to function in society, such as reading, writing, and mathematics. As discussed in Appendix IV, our founders also recognized a second and essential task: educators must convey a sense of enlightened patriotism that equips each generation with a knowledge of America’s founding principles, a deep reverence for their liberties, and a profound love of their country. Presidential Advisory 1776 Final Report (January 2020), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf The report was criticized by the American Historical Association for not have any professional historians on the commission, and Sean Wilentz described it as the “flip side of those polemics” in the 1619 Project and a “basically a political document” that “reduces history to hero worship.” Within hours of taking office, President Biden dissolved the commission. While Trump left office before this project got off the ground, it has not stop state legislatures from politicizing the teaching of History in the primary and secondary schools. Rufo set up a tip line from which he learned that third graders in one school in Cupertino, California, were being asked to rank themselves and their classmates according to privilege. But many educators across the country claimed that CRT was not being taught in their schools. But this is not completely true here in North Carolina. The Republican legislature reduced the teaching of American history to one year in order to create a one-year required course in personal finance. It also sought to revised the 2010 social studies standards. They have gone through multiple drafts, including one that would have third-grade students study how monuments such as Confederate statues are “valued by their community.” Another draft included the words “systematic racism,” “systematic discrimination,” and “gender identity.” Another revision of the North Carolina History Standards suggested by the Republican State Superintendent of Schools Catherine Truitt was to replace in an earlier draft the terms “systemic racism,” “systemic discrimination,” and “gender identity” with the words “racism,” “discrimination,” and “identity.” She argued that using the term “systemic racism” would imply that the U.S. government and Constitution are both racist. The changes were made in the final document. However, the Lieutenant Governor, Mark Robinson, a Republican African-American, who is on the Board of Education voted against the standards even with the revisions. Even still, the North Carolina Social Studies Standards for the teaching the one-year course in high school are not really history standards. The first seven standards pertain to five disciplines (1) Inquiry (Analytical Skills), (2) Behavioral Science; (3) Civics and Government, (4) Economics, and (5) Geography. Only the last three standards are labeled History. (1) “Understand the reasons for American involvement in conflicts and the domestic and foreign impacts,” (2) Explain the causes and effects of various domestic conflicts in terms of race, gender, and political, economic and social factors,” and (3) Explain the causes and effects of various international conflicts/war in terms of political, economic, and social factors.” Among the objectives for the first of these standards is “Explain the causes and effects of various domestic conflicts in terms of race, gender, and political, economic, and social factors,” for the second standard “Distinguish the extent to which American Foreign policy has advance the interest of historically privileged groups over the interest of historically marginalized groups,” and for the third “Compare how competing historical narratives of various turning points portray individuals and groups including marginalized people.” Clearly, some of the language from Critical Race Theory has made its way into these standards. Furthermore, these meager history standards are social studies themes, not chronological history. The 2021 North Carolina History standards are far inferior to the 2010 Standards, which required the teaching of North Carolina History in the fourth and eighth grade, two courses in American History and one in World History in the high schools. Each had specific indicators of what to study in each of these courses. North Carolina 2010 Social Studies Standards Course of Studies, https://sites.google.com/dpi.nc.gov/social-studies/standards/n-c-social-studies-essential-standards-unpacking The North Carolina Board of Education added so-called “Unpacking Documents” with examples of chronological history, topics, and documents. But it defined these as “possible curriculum content” with a note that “teachers should not feel limited to those examples that are provided in the document. They are suggestions only, and do not prevent the teachers from teaching other examples.” In 2004 as a senior research associate at the New Jersey Historical Commission, I participating in the revision of the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards in Social Studies. At that time there were two different groups of Social Studies teachers in the New Jersey high schools. One group were members of the New Jersey Council for the Social Studies who wanted to teach social studies topics based on current events, and the other group were members of the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for History Education who wanted to teach chronological history. I suggested that the social studies teachers work on the Civics, Geography, and Economics standards, and the history teachers on the World, American, and New Jersey History. The final document approved by the New Jersey Board of Education used chronological History as the framework for teaching Civics, Economics, and Geography. While the members of the state legislature still wanted the standards to reflect patriotism it was not brought to the forefront, because it encouraged students to debate primary source documents and did not promote a single point of view or conclusion (See, How the Cult of Assessment Has Relegated The Teaching of History to the Dustbin: A New Jersey Example). In September 2021 the Republican-dominated North Carolina Legislature passed a bill, while not mentioning Critical Race Theory by name, stated the schools should not promote topics, such as “no race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex” or “an individual solely by virtue of his or her race is inherently racist or sexist, or oppressive” or that teachers shall not promote anyone “to feel discomfit, guilt, or any other form of psychological distress based on their race or sex.” The bill required teachers to post their curriculum online at least thirty days before teaching it.” Democratic governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill and it had little chance of being over-ridden. In the elections of 2022 the Republican gained a veto-proof majority in both houses, and in 2023 another bill was introduced that prohibits teaching that the government is “inherently racist” or was created to oppress people of another race or sex. The language was based on a model from the Citizens for Renewing America, a conservative group founded by a former Trump administration official to rid the nation’s schools of Critical Race Theory. However, the bill is currently stalled. In January 2023 the Board of Governors of the University of Carolina, appointed by the Republic dominated Senate and Assembly, passed a resolution to create a new school whose missions was “promoting democracy” and “building skills in public discourse.” This was after a retreat of the Board in the Fall of 2020 in which the speaker was Michael Poliakoff of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). ACTA is funded by the right-wing Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the Koch Foundation, and it promotes free market fundamentalism, small government, privatization, and lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy. David Boliek, chairman of the UNC Board of Trustees told Fox News that there is “no shortage of left-of-center progressive views” on the UNC campus and that the School of Civil Life and Leadership “is an effort to remedy that.” In April 2024 the UNC Board of Trustees created a separate School of Civil Life and Leadership. Jed Atkins, a scholar of Classical Studies at Duke University, was appointed as its first dean and director. The new School of Civil Life and Leadership seems to be modeled on the conservative think tank the Claremont Institute created in 1979 in Claremont California. According to its website, its stated purpose is to teach “the principles of American Founding to the future thinkers and statesmen of America,” including the “the foundation doctrine of natural rights and law found in the Declaration of Independence, the ingenious political science of the Constitution, and the popular constitutionalism or reverence necessary for the maintenance of free government.” Furthermore, the website states: “We promote the application in the courts and among legal practitioners throughout our center for Constitutional jurisprudence.” In other words, the legal doctrine of original intent as opposed to the living Constitution that is dominant on the Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court today. Finally, the website states: “Through our Center for the American Way of Life, which is devoted to restoring political liberty by arming the Right with moral confidence, ideas, and new policies, while working to undermine the3 Left’s hold over America’s institutions and conscience.” I am personally familiar with the roots of this kind of thinking. As a graduate student in American Studies at Claremont in 1965-1966 I took a seminar on the Federalist Papers taught by political scientist Martin Diamond and colonial historian Douglas Adair. Diamond was a student of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago, who was the intellectual godfather of neo-Conservatism. Strauss argued for a return the Classical philosophy of the ancient Greeks and a close reading of their texts. Adair and Diamond had us interpret the Federalist Papers as a primary source in terms of the thinkers who influenced the Founding Fathers, including the Greek concept of democracy and the Roman republicanism. This influenced my teaching at Rutgers-Newark in the 1970s and my projects at the New Jersey Historical Commission by emphasizing primary source documents. However, at the Claremont Institute this approach has taken on an indoctrination of right-wing politics. Most recently, in February 2024, the UNC Board of Trustees has proposed that all undergraduates be required to take a course in civics that requires readings of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers as well as Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter From the Birmingham Jail. This is no substitute for a course in American History. When I was an undergraduate at Rutgers University every student in the School of Liberal Arts had to take a one year course in American History and another in Western Civilization. When I was teaching at Rutgers-Newark, Western Civilization course was replaced by World History, which was a needed revision given the global economy and foreign policy that exists today. However, neither the 1619 Project nor Critical Race Theory has gone away, and they have created a backlash that seeks to indoctrinate students in patriotism and American exceptionalism today. On June 6, 2024, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District approved what is called a “4x4 Block Schedule (With Daily Flex).” Under this plan the students will take four longer classes each day for a semester and then switch to a new set of classes for the next semester. Proponents say that it would enable students to go into more depth in historical studies. What this does, in effect, is to reduce the U.S. History in Chapel Hill-Carrboro high schools from one year to one semester. However, this would made it impossible to teach chronological history as opposed to historical topics. It is yet another example of how social studies has replaced history in the high school curriculum. Thus, Critical Race Theory will continue to be wedge issues in American education and politics in the foreseeable future.