Reflections on The 1619 Project book

As I've been reading The 1619 Project book, I've been sharing reflections on what I've learned. 14 chapters in, here's a compilation of links to what I've shared with a few new reflections.

I've listened to the podcast series, read some of the articles in the newspaper, and now I'm enjoying learning more through the physical book. The whole project is an amazing example of how to distribute content widely and tailor it to different mediums.

Note on the term slave

• Language has power. The writers of The 1619 Project book avoid using the word "slave". "The alternate term 'enslaved person' accurately conveys the condition without stripping the individual of his or her humanity"

Chapter 1 - Democracy (Aug 2022)

• July 4th might not be the best day to celebrate freedom. 20% of Americans remained enslaved the day the Declaration of Independence was approved by Congress. Black Americans' fought for their rights and helped America live up to the ideals set in the Declaration. When we honor the year 1619, we honor the arrival of the first Black Americans to the country and the start of their fight for civil rights, which helped bring civil rights to many other groups who were left out in 1776.

Chapter 2 - Race

• Laws of the past are still affecting people today. The stories are graphic, and unfortunately, still typical today. Many involve sexual assault.

Dorothy E. Roberts, PhD, a Harvard law professor, and a Black woman, wrote the essay and also 3 major books explaining issues in policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics.

Chapter 3 - Sugar

• Free labor in the form of enslaved Black workers made sugar a profitable commodity traded on Wall Street and a profitable crop grown in the Southern United States. And today, sugar in our diet is linked to diabetes, obesity, and cancer. The descendants of enslaved people who made sugar a success are now victims of sugar's success. For example, the rate of diabetes in Black women is double the rate in white women.

Chapter 4 - Fear

• Fear of loss motivates people to keep things the same. To defeat systemic racism, we must keep hope that we can change for the better.

Chapter 5 - Dispossession

Chapter 6 - Capitalism

• Individuals succeed in capitalism because they can own property. In the US, slavery was protected when the property rights of successful capitalists won out over the individual rights of enslaved people.

Chapter 7 - Politics

Chapter 8 - Citizenship

Chapter 9 - Self-Defense

Chapter 10 - Punishment

Chapter 11 - Inheritance

• When white people unjustly killed Black Americans as recent as 80 years ago, they called it "lynching."
• Read?Trymaine Lee's "Inheritance" chapter in The 1619 project book for the story of one lynching. A 1947 lynching caused financial ruin for the murdered man's wife and his descendants.
• Elmore Bolling succeeded until he was killed. He created wealth that his family should have inherited. Instead, it was taken from them, along with the stability his success had previously provided for the family.
• If you don't have the book yet, you can learn more about the Bollings from The Elmore Bolling Initiative.

Chapter 12 - Medicine

Chapter 13 - Church

• I reflected on my own experience with the Black church after reading about the history of the Black church. After I shared my story, I was reminded that this history is our collective history, not just Black history.

Chapter 14 - Music

• The success of Black musicians today hides a long history of abuse. To enslaved people, music was one of the few forms of cultural expression allowed by their enslavers. Over centuries of enslavement, it became an American cultural phenomena that white people began to embrace in an abusive way.

1. White men cruelly imitated Black men in six decades of performances popular in American culture known as minstrelsy. The minstrels blackened their faces with burned cork to amuse their audiences with songs and dances that made fun of Black Americans. To this day, the culture of blackface minstrelsy haunts the world. Racist minstrel songs like "Oh, Susanna", are still popular.
2. Despite it all, Black Americans have created a unique music that stands out through the imitators. Enslaved and formerly enslaved people created new music genres like jazz, rock 'n roll, funk, and hip-hop. Today, the true music of Black Americans is popular around the world and Black performers often get credit for it, though not always.?

Banner photo from the W.E.B. Du Bois collection in the Library of Congress. The 1619 Project features historical photos of Black Americans with every chapter. Du Bois exposed the world to the lives of Black Americans through his collections.