Thank You, Senator Cotton
For making me aware of the 1619 Project
I’d never heard of the 1619 Project before it landed in the news this week when Senator Tom Cotton said slavery was “the necessary evil upon which the Union was built” while advocating to defund schools that teach the 1619 Project.
That led me to this story explaining the Project in the New York Times and to this one which talks about an early edit and uses the word “historiography” — another first for me.
I had to stop mid-story after reading that word just to savor it for a moment. I love the way it combines “history” and “graphy,” which seems to admit on its face that history is written by fallible humans and must be corrected when the occasion demands.
And I can’t think of an occasion that demands it more than this horrific year.
I’ve long been aware that women are dismissed, ignored, and written out of U.S. history. Where’s my Harriet Tubman $20 bill? My monument to Nellie Bly? And events rocking the United States since the murder of George Floyd remind me that Black Americans face the same.
When I read about the Black Lives Matter protests happening across the United States and the federal troops being sent to quash them (over local lawmakers’ objections), I see that the culture is rupturing and…
