The 1619 Project

Tomorrow's edition of the New York Times Magazine is devoted to the 1619 Project, marking 400 years since the first Africans were brought to the colonies that became the U.S. I've been hearing about it for weeks, so much that I was confused about whether it had already been published, but I guess the print edition is in tomorrow morning's paper so I'm going to go get one (since I'm not a subscriber).


You can read about the project here, and watch a two-hour video from the launch event held this week in New York with Nikole Hannah-Jones, the project's leader, and other contributors. This is the link to the online version, which contains interactive work I haven't seen (it's paywalled, but worth the price of admission or giving them your name for the 10 free articles a month, though I haven't done it yet).

Hannah-Jones's written contribution is the lead essay, which sounds amazing. The issue also contains stories on the brutality of the plantation system and its relation to our current economic system by Matt Desmond (author of Evicted), race-based wealth inequality by Trymaine Lee, unequal justice by Bryan Stephenson, the barbarity of sugar by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and even how segregation caused your traffic jam by Kevin Kruse. There's poetry and prose and more I haven't mentioned.

I'm looking forward to it.