1619 Project Lesson Plan

What is the central argument and goal of The 1619 Project? How does that make you feel?

Students should identify the goal of The 1619 Project as rethinking the origins and foundations of the United States. The editor writes, “The goal of The 1619 Project…is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country” (4-5). The argument is that everything the United States has come to be, from its economic power to its electoral system to its popular...