The 1619 Project is an artistic and journalistic project of the New York Times Magazine that asserts the central event in the founding of the United States was the first importation of enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619  and not the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or the drafting of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The project further asserts that U.S. history and modern America are best understood as completely dependent upon the institution of slavery. ¹¹ Project director Nikole Hannah-Jones and other 1619 collaborators have been recipients of MacArthur Fellowships—also known as MacArthur “genius” awards—$625,000 cash prizes given out by the MacArthur Foundation to what a Chicago Magazine profile described as often left-leaning recipients. ²

Expanding on that further, according to Slate, he told the audience: ²²

Another group of twelve professors of history and political science with specialized expertise in the Civil War submitted a separate letter to the New York Times, citing concerns specific to their field. The academics hailed from numerous large and prominent institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, Yale University, Michigan State University, the University of Alabama, Princeton University, and Washington & Lee University. ²³

We do not believe that the authors of The 1619 Project have considered these larger contexts with sufficient seriousness, or invited a candid review of its assertions by the larger community of historians. We are also troubled that these materials are now to become the basis of school curriculums, with the imprimatur of the New York Times. The remedy for past historical oversights is not their replacement by modern oversights. We therefore respectfully ask the New York Times to withhold any steps to publish and distribute The 1619 Project until these concerns can be addressed in a thorough and open fashion. ³³

“Through this campaign,” said a January 2020 NAS statement, “we aim to counter the claims of The 1619 Project and provide a broader picture of American history, one that is informed by a thorough and unbiased assessment of historical data.” ³⁷

Lucas Morel, professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University. ¹¹

Of the $1.8 million given to the Center by the MacArthur Foundation, $650,000 was granted for purposes that may align with initiatives such as the 1619 Project. According to FoundationSearch records, a 2014 grant was for support of “general operations (over two years), media, culture and special initiatives, journalism and media, reporting.” Likewise, two grants totaling $500,000 in 2015 and 2016 were for “support of a new fund for multi-media journalism collaborations between the Pulitzer center and major news organizations with large audiences.”  ¹¹

MacArthur Fellows

1619 Project leader and creator Nikole Hannah-Jones was a 2017 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, colloquially known as a MacArthur “Genius” grant. The fellowships are $625,000 cash grants often awarded to left-leaning activists in various fields. A 2015 profile of the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago Magazine stated its funding interests “have tended to be fairly liberal” and in particular that there “could hardly be a more liberal grant, for example, than the MacArthur Fellowship.” 0){ let parent=divs[divs.length-1].parentNode; let footer=divs[divs.length-1]; delete divs[divs.length-1]; for (let i=2; i