The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Content Warning: The source material contains graphic descriptions of slavery, physical and sexual abuse, sexual assault, and murder. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story also covers historical resources that may use outdated or racist language. This guide reproduces this language only when using direct quotations.

Preface-Chapter 4

Preface Summary: “‘Origins’ by Nikole Hannah-Jones”

When Nikole Hannah-Jones was a teenager, she took a high school course called “The African American Experience.” Through the guidance of her instructor, Mr. Ray Dial, and a book called Before the Mayflower, she learned that a Dutch ship called the White Lion transported the first enslaved Africans to the shore of New England in 1619. Hannah-Jones was struck by the fact that this event was not included in her American history curriculum thus far: “School textbooks, television and the local history museum depicted a world, perhaps a wishful one, where Black people did not really exist” (xvii). Hannah-Jones notes that her school curriculum focused first on American slavery and then jumped to the civil rights movement, ignoring the 100 years following emancipation. She states that this indicates that the perspective on the world being offered her was a distinctly white perspective.