Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. Black Americans fought to make them true. Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all.

By Nikole Hannah-Jones Artwork by Adam Pendleton August 18, 2019

15 T he 1619 Project

My dad always fl ew an American signed up for the Army. Like many pirates had stolen them from a Por- But it would be historically inac- fl ag in our front yard. The blue young men, he joined in hopes of tuguese slave ship that had forcibly curate to reduce the contributions paint on our two- story house was escaping poverty. But he went into taken them from what is now the of black people to the vast materi- perennially chipping; the fence, or the military for another reason as country of Angola. Those men and al wealth created by our bondage. the rail by the stairs, or the front well, a reason common to black women who came ashore on that Black Americans have also been, door, existed in a perpetual state of men: Dad hoped that if he served August day were the beginning of and continue to be, foundational disrepair, but that fl ag always fl ew his country, his country might fi nal- American slavery. They were among to the idea of American freedom. pristine. Our corner lot, which had ly treat him as an American. the 12.5 million Africans who would More than any other group in this been redlined by the federal gov- The Army did not end up being be kidnapped from their homes and country’s history, we have served, ernment, was along the river that his way out. He was passed over for brought in chains across the Atlantic generation after generation, in an divided the black side from the opportunities, his ambition stunt- Ocean in the largest forced migra- overlooked but vital role: It is we white side of our Iowa town. At the ed. He would be discharged under tion in human history until the Sec- who have been the perfecters of edge of our lawn, high on an alu- murky circumstances and then ond World War. Almost two million this democracy. minum pole, soared the fl ag, which labor in a series of service jobs for did not survive the grueling journey, The United States is a nation my dad would replace as soon as it the rest of his life. Like all the black known as the Middle Passage. founded on both an ideal and a lie. showed the slightest tatter. men and women in my family, he Before the abolishment of the Our Declaration of Independence, My dad was born into a family believed in hard work, but like all international slave trade, 400,000 signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims of sharecroppers on a white plan- the black men and women in my enslaved Africans would be sold into that ‘‘all men are created equal’’ and tation in Greenwood, Miss., where family, no matter how hard he America. Those individuals and their ‘‘endowed by their Creator with cer- black people bent over cotton from worked, he never got ahead. descendants transformed the lands tain unalienable rights.’’ But the white can’t-see- in- the- morning to can’t- So when I was young, that fl ag to which they’d been brought into men who drafted those words did not see- at- night, just as their enslaved outside our home never made sense some of the most successful colonies believe them to be true for the hun- ancestors had done not long before. to me. How could this black man, in the British Empire. Through back- dreds of thousands of black people The Mississippi of my dad’s youth having seen fi rsthand the way his breaking labor, they cleared the land in their midst. ‘‘Life, Liberty and the was an apartheid state that subju- country abused black Americans, across the Southeast. They taught pursuit of Happiness’’ did not apply gated its near-majority black pop- how it refused to treat us as full citi- the colonists to grow rice. They to fully one-fi fth of the country. Yet ulation through breathtaking acts zens, proudly fl y its banner? I didn’t grew and picked the cotton that at despite being violently denied the of violence. White residents in Mis- understand his patriotism. It deeply the height of slavery was the nation’s freedom and justice promised to all, sissippi lynched more black people embarrassed me. most valuable commodity, account- black Americans believed fervently than those in any other state in the I had been taught, in school, ing for half of all American exports in the American creed. Through cen- country, and the white people in through cultural osmosis, that the and 66 percent of the world’s supply. turies of black resistance and protest, my dad’s home county lynched fl ag wasn’t really ours, that our his- They built the plantations of George we have helped the country live up more black residents than those tory as a people began with enslave- Washington, Thomas Jeff erson and to its founding ideals. And not only in any other county in Mississippi, ment and that we had contributed James Madison, sprawling proper- for ourselves — black rights strug- often for such ‘‘crimes’’ as entering little to this great nation. It seemed ties that today attract thousands of gles paved the way for every other a room occupied by white women, that the closest thing black Amer- visitors from across the globe cap- rights struggle, including women’s bumping into a white girl or trying icans could have to cultural pride tivated by the history of the world’s and gay rights, immigrant and dis- to start a sharecroppers union. My was to be found in our vague con- greatest democracy. They laid the ability rights. dad’s mother, like all the black peo- nection to Africa, a place we had foundations of the White House and Without the idealistic, strenuous ple in Greenwood, could not vote, never been. That my dad felt so the Capitol, even placing with their and patriotic eff orts of black Amer- use the public library or fi nd work much honor in being an American unfree hands the Statue of Freedom icans, our democracy today would other than toiling in the cotton fi elds felt like a marker of his degradation, atop the Capitol dome. They lugged most likely look very diff erent — it or toiling in white people’s houses. his acceptance of our subordination. the heavy wooden tracks of the rail- might not be a democracy at all. So in the 1940s, she packed up her Like most young people, I thought roads that crisscrossed the South The very fi rst person to die for few belongings and her three small I understood so much, when in fact I and that helped take the cotton this country in the American Revo- children and joined the fl ood of understood so little. My father knew they picked to the Northern textile lution was a black man who himself black Southerners fl eeing North. exactly what he was doing when he mills, fueling the Industrial Revo- was not free. Crispus Attucks was She got off the Illinois Central Rail- raised that fl ag. He knew that our lution. They built vast fortunes for a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave road in Waterloo, Iowa, only to have people’s contributions to build- white people North and South — at his life for a new nation in which her hopes of the mythical Promised ing the richest and most powerful one time, the second- richest man in his own people would not enjoy the Land shattered when she learned nation in the world were indelible, the nation was a Rhode Island ‘‘slave liberties laid out in the Declaration that Jim Crow did not end at the that the United States simply would trader.’’ Profi ts from black people’s for another century. In every war Mason- Dixon line. not exist without us. stolen labor helped the young nation this nation has waged since that fi rst Grandmama, as we called her, In August 1619, just 12 years after pay off its war debts and fi nanced one, black Americans have fought — found a house in a segregated black the English settled Jamestown, Va., some of our most prestigious uni- today we are the most likely of all neighborhood on the city’s east side one year before the Puritans land- versities. It was the relentless buy- racial groups to serve in the United and then found the work that was ed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 ing, selling, insuring and fi nancing States military. considered black women’s work no years before the English colonists of their bodies and the products of My father, one of those many matter where black women lived even decided they wanted to form their labor that made Wall Street black Americans who answered — cleaning white people’s houses. their own country, the Jamestown a thriving banking, insurance and the call, knew what it would take me Dad, too, struggled to fi nd promise colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved trading sector and New York City years to understand: that the year in this land. In 1962, at age 17, he Africans from English pirates. The the fi nancial capital of the world. 1619 is as important to the American 16 Currier & Ives, via the Library of Congress and self-and governance defi has ned freedomto humankind of rights natural and fundamental the of last 243 years, thisfi erce assertion Happiness.’’of pursuit the Forthe among these are Life,Liberty and that Rights, unalienable certain are endowedby theirCreator with are men all createdthey that equal, these truths to be self- evident, that penned these words: ‘‘We hold rented room in Philadelphia and portable at his deskwriting in a 1776,In June flthat claim to us.thanag a greater has people no that And nation’s ‘‘founding true fathers.’’ ter nation’s in the are capital, this castmen those as much as alabas- in story as 1776. That black Americans, Senate;the S. Benjamin Turner;Robert De Large;C. Josiah T. Walls; JeffersonH. Long; Joseph H. Rainy; Brownand R. Elliot. 1872 portraitAn of African-Americans serving Congress in (from left): Hiram Revels, the first blackelected man to Thomas Jeff sat erson on the individual rights of men. of rights individual on the for a new republic democratic based text the drafted he making case the ensureand phia every his comfort as cello, toaccompany him to Philadel- forced- labor camp Monti- he called enslaved that people worked on the Hemings, from 130about among in slavery. Jeff erson had chosen to keep their half-black children was common for enslaverswhite father a and woman owned. he It wife, toMartha born Jeff erson’s he was half brotherthe of Jefferson’s name His was RobertHemings, and serve at his master’s beck and call. rights and liberties waited nearby to boy who would enjoy none of those inspiring words, however, a teenage liberty. As Jeff erson composed his ourreputation global of a land as A ugust 18,2019 17 precision cruelty, and ensured that customs, astounding for both their they created a network laws of and people were humanbeings, but low colonistswhite knew blackthat disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fel- given collateral, as used and gift a as be mortgaged, bought, sold, traded, butbeings as property that could ple were not recognized as human onto their children.Enslaved peo- and passed their enslaved status blackof people wereinto it born temporary, generations meaning was not permanent, and heritable was Itbut racial. notconditional the world before. Chattel slavery unlike anything that hadexisted in under gled systembrutal a slavery of ulation strug- colonies 13 the within At one-fi time, the pop- the of fth Enslavers orrape could murder their courts,they had nolegal standing. siblings,mothers, cousins. most In nothonordid courts to ties kinship ‘‘Negroes forSale.’’ Enslavers andthe or storefronts behind advertised that furniturealongside blocks cattle and awaytraded from on auction them dren, who could be bought, sold and Theyto notheir claim had own chil- from meeting privatelyin groups. learning to read and restricted lymarry. They were barred from to the list of the strict sciences.’’ system the add of slaveryAmerican might be called a science, we might ‘‘If any thing founded on falsehood ist WilliamGoodell wrote in 1853, treatedbe such. as abolition- the As that enslaved people would never Enslaved peoplecould not legal- T he 1619 Project

A postcard showing the scene at the murder of Allen Brooks, an African-American laborer who was accused of attempted rape. He was dragged through the streets around the Dallas County Courthouse and lynched on March 3, 1910. Postcards of lynchings were not uncommon in the early 20th century. property without legal consequence. colonists decided to declare their to ensure that slavery would con- Constitution, the framers careful- Enslaved people could own nothing, independence from Britain was tinue. It is not incidental that 10 of ly constructed a document that will nothing and inherit nothing. because they wanted to protect the this nation’s fi rst 12 presidents were preserved and protected slavery They were legally tortured, includ- institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain enslavers, and some might argue without ever using the word. In the ing by those working for Jeff erson had grown deeply confl icted over its that this nation was founded not as texts in which they were making the himself. They could be worked to role in the barbaric institution that a democracy but as a slavocracy. case for freedom to the world, they death, and often were, in order to had reshaped the Western Hemi- Jeff erson and the other founders did not want to explicitly enshrine produce the highest profi ts for the sphere. In London, there were grow- were keenly aware of this hypoc- their hypocrisy, so they sought to white people who owned them. ing calls to abolish the slave trade. risy. And so in Jeff erson’s original hide it. The Constitution contains Yet in making the argument This would have upended the econo- draft of the Declaration of Inde- 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the against Britain’s tyranny, one of the my of the colonies, in both the North pendence, he tried to argue that it enslaved and their enslavement, as colonists’ favorite rhetorical devic- and the South. The wealth and prom- wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, the historian David Wald streicher es was to claim that they were the inence that allowed Jeff erson, at just he blamed the king of England for has written, and fi ve more hold slaves — to Britain. For this duplic- 33, and the other founding fathers forcing the institution of slavery on implications for slavery. The Con- ity, they faced burning criticism to believe they could successfully the unwilling colonists and called stitution protected the ‘‘property’’ both at home and abroad. As Sam- break off from one of the mightiest the traffi cking in human beings a of those who enslaved black peo- uel Johnson, an English writer and empires in the world came from the crime. Yet neither Jeff erson nor ple, prohibited the federal govern- Tory opposed to American inde- dizzying profi ts generated by chat- most of the founders intended to ment from intervening to end the pendence, quipped, ‘‘How is it that tel slavery. In other words, we may abolish slavery, and in the end, they importation of enslaved Africans for we hear the loudest yelps for liberty never have revolted against Britain struck the passage. a term of 20 years, allowed Congress among the drivers of Negroes?’’ if the founders had not understood There is no mention of slavery to mobilize the militia to put down Conveniently left out of our that slavery empowered them to do in the fi nal Declaration of Inde- insurrections by the enslaved and founding mythology is the fact so; nor if they had not believed that pendence. Similarly, 11 years later, forced states that had outlawed that one of the primary reasons the independence was required in order when it came time to draft the slavery to turn over enslaved people 18 Left: From the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Right: From Special Collections and Archives/Georgia State University Library. day. If black people couldnot ever cannot purge from this nation to this racism that endemic of the we still were aslave race, became the root ple were not merely enslaved but respect.’’ This belief, thatblack peo- a which man white was to bound Government’’the ‘‘no had and rights or people the of portion of citizens founders had ‘‘not regarded as a classarate of persons,’’ thewhich race,’’ the court ruled, was ‘‘a sep- was for ‘‘Negrothe and citizens, American democracy. Democracy therefore,and, incompatible with made them inferior to white people free,from came a ‘‘slave’’ race. This black people, whether enslaved or Dred that ruling decision, Scott this thinking in law the in its 1857 dropible ‘‘black’’ of blood. tion of people whohad anydiscern- subjugationsta- natural the became considered white, enslavement and people the of right who would be inalienable liberty the was While black of doctrine the inferiority.’’ as well as economicinvestment in ‘‘had psychological aconsiderable er they engaged slavery in or not, wheth- Americans,white Diamond, RaymondT. and CottrolRobert J. legal historians B.Leland Ware, earlythe according1800s, tothe cans tolive their with betrayal. By a belief that allowed white Ameri- blackthat people were subhuman, literature, and ence maintained not justby lawsbut by racist sci- system. This ideology, reinforced a hardeningto caste racial the of freedom, scholars today assert, led founded nation a in individual on adox slavery continuing of chattel toneed cleanse it. The shameful par- nation’sthis own, so, and too, the slavery on Britain. The sinbecame longerno could fathers ing blame highestthe men in stations.’’ of slavery has its advocates among country,enlightened practice the fromconceal Europe,in that this used, [and] are evidently chosen to sense common of would have manplain no as such ambiguous; stitution, ‘‘The words are dark and saying deceit, out the Con- of the abolitionistByron Samuel called Like many the others, writer and who had run away seeking refuge. The Supreme Court enshrined With independence, thefound- declared that no black personcould after nation’s the highest courts On Aug. 14, 1862, ‘‘We the People’’ was not a lie. Constitution,the ‘‘we’’ the and in the notrequire the rights bestowed by from all other humans, then they did they if citizens, be were acaste apart a decorated Army veteran, was severely beaten by police, the blind. him leaving Isaac Woodard and his mother Carolina in South inIn 1946. February that year, Woodard, a mere fimere a ve years A ugust 18,2019 19 a year, black and abolitionists, who War forraging been had more than HouseWhite as guests. The Civil people had ever been invited to the was few one the of thatblack times the HouseWhite for a meeting. It of five esteemed free black men to agroup called Lincoln Abraham be an American citizen, President unable tounable draw new enough white Confederacy’s behalf, and Lincoln, ing whether to intervene theon contemplat- wasBritain Lincoln. and pride. felt great of a sense anticipation Lincoln to slavery, end must have had been increasingly pressuring The war was not going well forgoingThe well war not was mass of white people will not.’’people will white of mass well know great the of those that mine andif this; of admit would, we earlier. ‘‘My own feelings notwill our equals?’’ four said had he years makepolitically them and socially for white people. ‘‘Free them, and with a democracy intended only presence’’ blesome incompatible that free black people were a ‘‘trou- blackopposed equality. Hebelieved with also he but ideals, American slavery system as a cruel at odds many white Americans, he opposed of this radical step would be. Like about ried consequences the what former ‘‘masters.’’ Lincoln But wor- Union army fi and againstght their formerlythe enslaved the join to The proclamation would also allow statesrebellion. the not end did had seceded fromthe Unionif the enslaved people in the states that threatenedthat all emancipate to dent was weighing a proclamation for their own liberation. Thepresi- allowing black Americans to fi ght to reconsider to opposition his forthe war,volunteers forced was to fight forblacksuffrage. A demonstrator at themarch 1965 from to Selma Montgomery, led bythe Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the month since the fi rst of their blackmen. It was 243 years to tarily stole the breath of these fi ve of what the president said momen- silence in that room, as the weight oneach side.’’ yourpresence. In a word, we suffer ing among us, ours while suffer from very greatly, many by of them, liv- diff erent races. . . . Your race suff er ‘‘You them. told Lincoln and we are question for proper consideration,’’ country? This fi the perhaps, is, rst freed, to another country. black ship to funds ate once people, gottenhad Congress appropri- to Heit. informed his guests that he a few Lincoln gotniceties, to right fiexchanging Afterassignment. rst er of emigration. This was to be his commission- the position called ed givenbeen ofa newly title the creat- Mitchell, who eight days before had named man a and Lincoln James weregreeted by the towering arrived at the House, White they Youheavy the can imagine ‘‘Why should they leave this That August day, men as the T he 1619 20 P time,’’ ‘‘No said. Lincoln hurry at all.’’ on proposition.sult his ‘‘Take your full curtly,perhaps that they would con- chairman, informed the president, delegation’sEdward the Thomas, both, therefore, tobe separated.’’ ‘‘It them. told dent is better for us not have an existence,’’ the presi- ored the as abasis, race war could institution slavery of col- the and one way or other the . . . the without on either not caredo side for you war. ‘‘Although many engaged men Lincoln was blaming for them the cause as well as their own. And now confederates, for arms taking up his eff sabotaging asspies, serving ort, join to the trying plantations, to call forced- likecamps, which welabor Enslaved people were fleeing their blackup to men signed fihad ght. Souththe from splitting off , yet the war to endslavery but to keep country. The Union entered not had their not this was that insisting ple long before mostof the white peo- shores, before Lincoln’sfamily, ancestors arrived had these on roject As Lincoln closed the remarks, the Lincoln closed As for two centuries.’’ Black Americans the did as faith ing NegroAmerican Freedom unquestion- such half with wrote, ‘‘Few men ever worshiped founding ideals. As W.E.B. Du Bois tament to their in nation’s this belief an astoundingis lands these don tes- not take up Lincoln’s offer to aban- die.’’here we will fathers. . . Here. we were born, and Beneath its sod lie thebones ourof is our our this and home, country. York some decades before:‘‘This convention of black leaders in New black colonization forward put a at sentiment of a resolution against inclined to leave, agreeing with the to Lincoln’s view, most were not icans were suddenly free. Contrary over, and four million black Amer- tox.By summer, Civil the War was E. Lee ert surrendered at Appomat- HouseWhite meeting, Gen. Rob- for nearly ahundred years, until fithe rst black last tothe elected man Bruce, Blanche would go from being period would be, Revels, along with (Demonstrating just howbrief this first black man elected to the Senate. the became Mississippi, who of els Congress — including Hiram Rev- offiSomeces. 16 blackmen served in elected to local, state and federal democracy,black Americans with this country,began toresemble a forfi the rst history the in time of enslavers had once held. The South, enslaved people into seats that their where they placedother formerly they in droves headed polls, tothe crimination and organize voters; rights organizations — to fi ght dis- nation’s the of one — fi rst human branches of the Equal Rights League violence,black Southerners started widespreadtempering white troops federalprocess. With democratic the zealouslyengaged with people from1877, to 1865 formerlyenslaved Reconstruction, of period brief nation’s this During opposite. the white feared.Americans They did so many and Lincoln as sors other seek vengeance ontheir oppres- byLiberated war, theythen, not did that dwellon the face of the earth.’’ nations of all onethe blood made Martin Delany ‘‘that said, has God ity believed, and abolitionist the as called forlong had universal equal- That the formerly enslaved did Nearly three years afterthat

Photograph by Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos August 18, 2019

Edward Brooke of Massachusetts rights legislation Congress has ever would grant him the presidency War America evaporated under took offi ce in 1967.) More than 600 passed. It codifi ed black American in a contested election, agreed to the desire for national reunifi ca- black men served in Southern state citizenship for the fi rst time, pro- pull federal troops from the South. tion, black Americans, simply by legislatures and hundreds more in hibited housing discrimination and With the troops gone, white South- existing, served as a problematic local positions. gave all Americans the right to buy erners quickly went about eradi- reminder of this nation’s failings. These black officials joined and inherit property, make and cating the gains of Reconstruction. White America dealt with this with white Republicans, some of enforce contracts and seek redress The systemic white suppression of inconvenience by constructing a whom came down from the North, from courts. In 1868, Congress rati- black life was so severe that this savagely enforced system of racial to write the most egalitarian state fi ed the 14th Amendment, ensuring period between the 1880s and the apartheid that excluded black constitutions the South had ever citizenship to any person born in 1920 and ’30s became known as the people almost entirely from main- seen. They helped pass more equi- the United States. Today, thanks to Great Nadir, or the second slavery. stream American life — a system table tax legislation and laws that this amendment, every child born Democracy would not return to the so grotesque that Nazi Germany prohibited discrimination in pub- here to a European, Asian, African, South for nearly a century. would later take inspiration from lic transportation, accommodation Latin American or Middle Eastern White Southerners of all econom- it for its own racist policies. and housing. Perhaps their biggest immigrant gains automatic citizen- ic classes, on the other hand, thanks Despite the guarantees of equal- achievement was the establishment ship. The 14th Amendment also, in signifi cant part to the progres- ity in the 14th Amendment, the of that most democratic of Ameri- for the fi rst time, constitutionally sive policies and laws black people Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. can institutions: the public school. guaranteed equal protection under had championed, experienced sub- Ferguson decision in 1896 declared Public education eff ectively did not the law. Ever since, nearly all other stantial improvement in their lives that the racial segregation of black exist in the South before Recon- marginalized groups have used the even as they forced black people Americans was constitutional. With struction. The white elite sent 14th Amendment in their fi ghts back into a quasi slavery. As Waters the blessing of the nation’s highest their children to private schools, for equality (including the recent McIntosh, who had been enslaved court and no federal will to vindi- while poor white children went successful arguments before the in South Carolina, lamented, ‘‘It was cate black rights, starting in the without an education. But newly Supreme Court on behalf of same- the poor white man who was freed late 1800s, Southern states passed freed black people, who had been sex marriage). Finally, in 1870, Con- by the war, not the Negroes.’’ a series of laws and codes meant to prohibited from learning to read gress passed the 15th Amendment, make slavery’s racial caste system and write during slavery, were des- guaranteeing the most critical Georgia pines flew past the windows permanent by denying black people perate for an education. So black aspect of democracy and citizen- of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac political power, social equality and legislators successfully pushed for ship — the right to vote — to all men Woodard home to Winnsboro, S.C. basic dignity. They passed literacy a universal, state- funded system of regardless of ‘‘race, color, or previ- After serving four years in the Army tests to keep black people from vot- schools — not just for their own ous condition of servitude.’’ in World War II, where Woodard ing and created all-white primaries children but for white children, For this fl eeting moment known had earned a battle star, he was for elections. Black people were too. Black legislators also helped as Reconstruction, the majority in given an honorable discharge ear- prohibited from serving on juries pass the fi rst compulsory educa- Congress seemed to embrace the lier that day at Camp Gordon and or testifying in court against a white tion laws in the region. Southern idea that out of the ashes of the Civil was headed home to meet his wife. person. South Carolina prohibited children, black and white, were War, we could create the multiracial When the bus stopped at a small white and black textile workers now required to attend schools democracy that black Americans drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, from using the same doors. Okla- like their Northern counterparts. envisioned even if our founding Woodard got into a brief argument homa forced phone companies to Just fi ve years into Reconstruction, fathers did not. with the white driver after asking if segregate phone booths. Memphis every Southern state had enshrined But it would not last. he could use the restroom. About had separate parking spaces for the right to a public education for Anti-black racism runs in the half an hour later, the driver stopped black and white drivers. Baltimore all children into its constitution. very DNA of this country, as does again and told Woodard to get off passed an ordinance outlawing In some states, like Louisiana and the belief, so well articulated by the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Wood- black people from moving onto South Carolina, small numbers of Lincoln, that black people are the ard stepped from the stairs and saw a block more than half white and black and white children, briefl y, obstacle to national unity. The the police waiting for him. Before white people from moving onto a attended schools together. many gains of Reconstruction were he could speak, one of the offi cers block more than half black. Geor- Led by black activists and a met with fi erce white resistance struck him in his head with a billy gia made it illegal for black and Republican Party pushed left by throughout the South, including club, beating him so badly that white people to be buried next to the blatant recalcitrance of white unthinkable violence against the he fell unconscious. The blows to one another in the same cemetery. Southerners, the years directly after formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter Woodard’s head were so severe that Alabama barred black people from slavery saw the greatest expansion suppression, electoral fraud and when he woke in a jail cell the next using public libraries that their own of human and civil rights this nation even, in some extreme cases, the day, he could not see. The beating tax dollars were paying for. Black would ever see. In 1865, Congress overthrow of democratically elect- occurred just 4½ hours after his people were expected to jump off passed the 13th Amendment, mak- ed biracial governments. Faced with military discharge. At 26, Woodard the sidewalk to let white people pass ing the United States one of the last this unrest, the federal government would never see again. and call all white people by an hon- nations in the Americas to outlaw decided that black people were the There was nothing unusual orifi c, though they received none slavery. The following year, black cause of the problem and that for about Woodard’s horrifi c maiming. no matter how old they were. In the Americans, exerting their new unity’s sake, it would leave the white It was part of a wave of systemic North, white politicians implement- political power, pushed white leg- South to its own devices. In 1877, violence deployed against black ed policies that segregated black islators to pass the Civil Rights Act, President Rutherford B. Hayes, Americans after Reconstruction, in people into slum neighborhoods the nation’s fi rst such law and one in order to secure a compromise both the North and the South. As and into inferior all-black schools, of the most expansive pieces of civil with Southern Democrats that the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil operated whites-only public pools 21 T he 1619 Project and held white and ‘‘colored’’ days And black veterans like Woodard, Mississippi said on the Senate Hundreds of black veterans were at the country fair, and white busi- especially those with the audacity fl oor during World War I, black beaten, maimed, shot and lynched. nesses regularly denied black peo- to wear their uniform, had since servicemen returning to the South We like to call those who lived ple service, placing ‘‘Whites Only’’ the Civil War been the target of a would ‘‘inevitably lead to disaster.’’ during World War II the Greatest signs in their windows. States like particular violence. This intensifi ed Giving a black man ‘‘military airs’’ Generation, but that allows us to California joined Southern states in during the two world wars because and sending him to defend the fl ag ignore the fact that many of this barring black people from marry- white people understood that once would bring him ‘‘to the conclu- generation fought for democracy ing white people, while local school black men had gone abroad and sion that his political rights must abroad while brutally suppressing boards in Illinois and New Jersey experienced life outside the suff o- be respected.’’ democracy for millions of Ameri- mandated segregated schools for cating racial oppression of Amer- Many white Americans saw black can citizens. During the height of black and white children. ica, they were unlikely to quietly men in the uniforms of America’s racial terror in this country, black This caste system was maintained return to their subjugation at home. armed services not as patriotic but Americans were not merely killed through wanton racial terrorism. As Senator James K. Vardaman of as exhibiting a dangerous pride. but castrated, burned alive and Chained Migration: How Slavery Made Its Way West

By Tiya Miles

Slavery leapt out of the East uncharted space designated the American South wanted constitutions, individual enslav- and into the interior lands of as Indian Territory (including to extend cotton agriculture ers held onto their property- in- the Old Southwest in the 1820s present- day Oklahoma and Kan- and increase the numbers of people until the Civil War. and 1830s. Cotton began to soar sas). ‘‘Removal,’’ as the historian white arrivals. ‘‘It was slavery Enslaved men who had served as the most lucrative product in Claudio Saunt argues in a forth- that seemed to represent the in the Union Army were among the the global marketplace just as coming book on the topic, was far soft underbelly of the Texas first wave of African- Americans the slaveholding societies of too quiet a word to capture the unrest,’’ the historian Steven to move west of their own free the Southeast and Mid- Atlantic violation of this mass ‘‘expulsion’’ Hahn asserts in ‘‘A Nation With- will. They served as soldiers, and were reaching limits in soil fertili- of 80,000 people. out Borders.’’ Armed conflict together with wives and children ty. To land speculators, planters, As new lands in the Old South- between American-identified they formed pocket communi- ambitious settlers and Northern west were pried open, white enslavers and a Mexican state ties in Montana, Colorado, New investors, the fertile lands to the enslavers back east realized that outlawed slavery in 1829 Mexico and Texas. It is a painful west now looked irresistible. that their most profitable export was among the causes of the paradox that the work of black The Native American nations was no longer tobacco or rice. A Mexican-American War, which soldiers centered on what the that possessed the bulk of those complex interstate slave trade won for the United States much historian Quintard Taylor has lands stood in the way of this became an industry of its own. of the Southwest and California. called ‘‘settler protection’’ in his imagined progress. President This extractive system, together Texas became the West’s classic 1998 study of African- Andrew Jackson, an enslaver with enslavers moving west with cotton slavery stronghold, with Americans in the West, ‘‘In Search from Tennessee famous for brutal human property, resulted in the enslaved black people making of the Racial Frontier.’’ Even while ‘‘Indian’’ fighting in Georgia and relocation of approximately one up 30 percent of the state’s bearing slavery’s scars, black Florida, swooped in on the side million enslaved black people to population in 1860. ‘‘Indian Ter- men found themselves carrying of fellow enslavers, championing a new region. The entrenched ritory’’ also held a large popu- out orders to secure white res- the Indian Removal Act of 1830. practice of buying, selling, lation of enslaved black people. idents of Western towns, track When Congress passed the bill owning, renting and mortgag- Mormons, too, kept scores of down ‘‘outlaws’’ (many of whom by a breathtakingly slim margin, ing humans stretched into the enslaved laborers in Utah. The were people of color), police the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, American West along with the small number of black people federally imposed boundaries Chickasaws and Seminoles in the white settler-colonial popula- who arrived in California, New of Indian reservations and quell South as well as Potawatomis, tion that now occupied former Mexico and Oregon before mid- labor strikes. ‘‘This small group Wyandots, Odawas, Delawares, indigenous lands. century usually came as proper- of black men,’’ Taylor observes, Shawnees and Senecas in the Slaveholding settlers who ty. Even as most Western states ‘‘paid a dear price in their bid to Midwest were relocated to an had pushed into Texas from banned slavery in their new earn the respect of the nation.’’ 22 “I didn’t want prostate cancer to slow me down. CyberKnife® was the ideal solution.”

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Mineola • 1.866.WINTHROP • nyuwinthrop.org belongedan inferior,to subhuman nation’s founding. son and the framers had used at the the same racist ideology that Jeffer- to resorted white Americans home, libertying entirean to back race simultaneouslydeny-abroad while tion of how they could prize liberty sin. original To answerques- the country’stheir of white Americans cal mechanism necessary toabsolve was a symptom psychologi- of the way.the violence extremityTheof would treat not this beings human supremacy:for Youwhite balm ical served it important, as a psycholog- trol black people, butperhaps just as lence was meant to terrify and con- displayed in storefronts. This vio- dismembered theirwith body parts headquarters the outside 2016 of Baton the Rouge Police Department. Ieshia Evans detained being by law enforcement officers ataBlack Lives Matter protest in This ideologyblack that — people the editorial board editorial the black the of eff tomakeort democracy real. As black sustained second Americans’ World War ignited II became what fi theinhumanityed of thepast. justi- America white of generation visitedon black peopleby every not to peer. And so the inhumanity ror in nation the preferredwhich as exceptional; we up held the mir- danger country’s to the itself of idea collapse. Free black people posed a allowed nation this slavery would then the entire justification for how excelled in the sciences and arts, the jobs white people ifdid, we became educated, if we thrived in lyenslaved and their descendants once slavery ended. If the former- simply not did — race disappear Just as white feared,Americans T he 1619 24 P law, which was in 1868 guaranteed treated before citizens full as the Rights Civil the Act; to be right the which was guaranteed in 1866 with treatedequally by institutions, public after Civil the War: be to right the theyrights fought had for and won black people were still seeking the centennial of slavery’s end neared, fithe rst Reconstruction. being the As massmovement for blackcivil rights, remember that this was second the and topause it useful is But ment. have come to call the civil rights move- we rebellion decades- long catalysts as one of the seen for the us.’’ Woodard’s blinding is largely and those abroad who enslavewill attack against our enslavers at home wrote, ‘‘We wage a two- pronged newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier roject white founders set up a decidedly struggle. rights ern This nation’s foundation for every other mod- the civil rights movement laid the The bloody freedom struggles of never fought only for ourselves. foughticans back alone. Yet we insidea church. their children with explosives set off skin with fi rehoses and murdered them with dogs, back peeled their fi rebombed them onmauled buses, sinated in them theirfront yards, their bodies in muddy rivers, assas- from trees, anddumped beat them rights, white strungAmericans them response to black demands for these in1870 by the 15th Amendment. In right to vote, which was guaranteed by 14th the the and Amendment; For most the black part, Amer-

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POSSIBLEPLAN.ORG T he 1619 Project undemocratic Constitution that They say our people were born on of all individuality — to exert their attendance, as if these conditions in excluded women, Native Ameri- the water. own identity. Enslaved people would a country built on a racial caste sys- cans and black people, and did not When it occurred, no one can wear their hat in a jaunty manner or tem are not utterly predictable. But provide the vote or equality for say for certain. Perhaps it was in knot their head scarves intricately. crucially, you cannot view those sta- most Americans. But the laws born the second week, or the third, but Today’s avant- garde nature of black tistics while ignoring another: that out of black resistance guarantee surely by the fourth, when they had hairstyles and fashion displays a black people were enslaved here the franchise for all and ban dis- not seen their land or any land for vibrant refl ection of enslaved peo- longer than we have been free. crimination based not just on race so many days that they lost count. ple’s determination to feel fully At 43, I am part of the fi rst gen- but on gender, nationality, religion It was after fear had turned to human through self- expression. The eration of black Americans in the and ability. It was the civil rights despair, and despair to resigna- improvisational quality of black art history of the United States to be movement that led to the passage tion, and resignation to an abiding and music comes from a culture that born into a society in which black of the Immigration and Nation- understanding. The teal eternity because of constant disruption could people had full rights of citizenship. ality Act of 1965, which upended of the Atlantic Ocean had severed not cling to convention. Black nam- Black people suff ered under slavery the racist immigration quota sys- them so completely from what had ing practices, so often impugned by for 250 years; we have been legally tem intended to keep this country once been their home that it was as mainstream society, are themselves ‘‘free’’ for just 50. Yet in that brief- white. Because of black Americans, if nothing had ever existed before, an act of resistance. Our last names est of spans, despite continuing to black and brown immigrants from as if everything and everyone they belong to the white people who once face rampant discrimination, and across the globe are able to come to cherished had simply vanished owned us. That is why the insistence despite there never having been a the United States and live in a coun- from the earth. They were no longer of many black Americans, particular- genuine eff ort to redress the wrongs try in which legal discrimination Mbundu or Akan or Fulani. These ly those most marginalized, to give of slavery and the century of racial is no longer allowed. It is a truly men and women from many diff er- our children names that we create, apartheid that followed, black American irony that some Asian- ent nations, all shackled together in that are neither European nor from Americans have made astounding Americans, among the groups able the suff ocating hull of the ship, they Africa, a place we have never been, progress, not only for ourselves but to immigrate to the United States were one people now. is an act of self-determination. When also for all Americans. because of the black civil rights Just a few months earlier, they the world listens to quintessential What if America understood, struggle, are now suing universities had families, and farms, and lives American music, it is our voice they fi nally, in this 400th year, that we to end programs designed to help and dreams. They were free. They hear. The sorrow songs we sang in have never been the problem but the descendants of the enslaved. had names, of course, but their the fi elds to soothe our physical the solution? No one cherishes freedom more enslavers did not bother to record pain and fi nd hope in a freedom When I was a child — I must than those who have not had it. And them. They had been made black by we did not expect to know until have been in fi fth or sixth grade — a to this day, black Americans, more those people who believed that they we died became American gospel. teacher gave our class an assignment than any other group, embrace the were white, and where they were Amid the devastating violence and intended to celebrate the diversity democratic ideals of a common heading, black equaled ‘‘slave,’’ and poverty of the Mississippi Delta, we of the great American melting pot. good. We are the most likely to slavery in America required turn- birthed jazz and blues. And it was in She instructed each of us to write a support programs like universal ing human beings into property by the deeply impoverished and segre- short report on our ancestral land health care and a higher minimum stripping them of every element gated neighborhoods where white and then draw that nation’s fl ag. As wage, and to oppose programs that made them individuals. This Americans forced the descendants she turned to write the assignment that harm the most vulnerable. For process was called seasoning, in of the enslaved to live that teenag- on the board, the other black girl in instance, black Americans suff er which people stolen from western ers too poor to buy instruments used class locked eyes with me. Slavery the most from violent crime, yet and central Africa were forced, old records to create a new music had erased any connection we had we are the most opposed to capital often through torture, to stop speak- known as hip-hop. to an African country, and even if we punishment. Our unemployment ing their native tongues and practic- Our speech and fashion and the tried to claim the whole continent, rate is nearly twice that of white ing their native religions. drum of our music echoes Africa but there was no ‘‘African’’ fl ag. It was Americans, yet we are still the most But as the sociologist Glenn Brac- is not African. Out of our unique iso- hard enough being one of two black likely of all groups to say this nation ey wrote, ‘‘Out of the ashes of white lation, both from our native cultures kids in the class, and this assignment should take in refugees. denigration, we gave birth to our- and from white America, we forged would just be another reminder of The truth is that as much democ- selves.’’ For as much as white people this nation’s most signifi cant origi- the distance between the white kids racy as this nation has today, it has tried to pretend, black people were nal culture. In turn, ‘‘mainstream’’ and us. In the end, I walked over to been borne on the backs of black not chattel. And so the process of society has coveted our style, our the globe near my teacher’s desk, resistance. Our founding fathers seasoning, instead of erasing iden- slang and our song, seeking to picked a random African country may not have actually believed in tity, served an opposite purpose: In appropriate the one truly Ameri- and claimed it as my own. the ideals they espoused, but black the void, we forged a new culture can culture as its own. As Langston I wish, now, that I could go back people did. As one scholar, Joe R. all our own. Hughes wrote in 1926, ‘‘They’ll see to the younger me and tell her that Feagin, put it, ‘‘Enslaved African- Today, our very manner of speak- how beautiful I am/And be ashamed her people’s ancestry started here, Americans have been among the ing recalls the Creole languages that —/I, too, am America.’’ on these lands, and to boldly, proud- foremost freedom-fighters this enslaved people innovated in order For centuries, white Ameri- ly, draw the stars and those stripes country has produced.’’ For genera- to communicate both with Afri- cans have been trying to solve the of the American fl ag. tions, we have believed in this coun- cans speaking various dialects and ‘‘Negro problem.’’ They have ded- We were told once, by virtue of try with a faith it did not deserve. the English-speaking people who icated thousands of pages to this our bondage, that we could never Black people have seen the worst enslaved them. Our style of dress, endeavor. It is common, still, to be American. But it was by virtue of America, yet, somehow, we still the extra fl air, stems back to the point to rates of black poverty, out- of our bondage that we became the believe in its best. desires of enslaved people — shorn of-wedlock births, crime and college most American of all. 26