Peter W. Wood - 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project

Advance Praise for 1620

Peter Woods pushback against the 1619 Project is at once sharp, illuminating, entertaining, and profound. More than a powerful expos of the 1619 Projects mendacity, Woods 1620 explains why so many Americans have succumbed to this exercise in manipulation and shows the way to fight back.

STANLEY KURTZ

senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Via Peter Wood, the civil body politic of the Mayflower Compact reasserts itself in the national conversation. 1620 is a dispassionate, clear reminder that the best in Americas past is still Americas best future.

AMITY SHLAES

chair, Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation

Peter Woods 1620 claims the prize as the most comprehensive response to the ill-fated 1619 Project. In a thorough review of the text, Wood accounts for every argument for and against. He appropriately honors the Projects intention to pursue a mission of redress, while nevertheless pinpointing its consistent resort to misrepresentation that cannot be dismissed as merely different interpretation. Wood identifies the heart of the matter: Surely there are ways to incorporate a forthright treatment of slavery, racism, and the black experience into the story of Americas rise as a free, self-governing, creative, and prosperous nation. The key to doing that is to put the pursuit of the ideals of liberty and justice at the center of the story. The 1619 Project failed in that for the sufficient reason that its purpose was cultural shakedown, not cultural affirmation. That is made plain in this necessary work.

WILLIAM ALLEN

emeritus dean and professor, Michigan State University

With elegant precision Peter Wood dismantles the edifice ostentatiously called a reframing of American history, the 1619 Project. He deftly exposes the jumble of lies, half-lies, logical fallacies, bad history, and bad faith of a project motivated by greed and hatred of America. For anyone who cares about history, education, truth, and the United States of America, 1620 is essential reading.

MARY GRABAR

resident fellow, Alexander Hamilton Institute

Peter Woods survey of the landscape of scholarly criticism has provided a valuable service, both in assessing the heated historical debates around the 1619 Project and by offering readers an accessible road-map with which to navigate its many controversies. Unfortunately the New York Times has thus far conspicuously avoided the most salient criticisms of its work. This helpful guide masterfully curates the scholarly scrutiny that the newspaper evaded and ignored, equipping the reader to approach the 1619 Project with a discerning eye for evidence-based history.

PHILLIP W. MAGNESS

senior research fellow, American Institute for Economic Research

Those of us who remain attached to the principles of the Founding need to read 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project with both care and gratitude. For Peter Wood, like a highly trained commando, has advanced to the front lines to clear away the dangerous rubbish put forth by the 1619 Project. With critical skill and in clear prose, he has opened multiple avenues of assault on a misguided enterprise that in trying to rewrite history deserves to end up on its ash-heap.

ROBERT PAQUETTE

president, Alexander Hamilton Institute; emeritus professor of history, Hamilton College

1620

1620

A Critical Response to the 1619 Project

PETER W. WOOD

2020 by Peter W. Wood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, New York, 10003.

First American edition published in 2020 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation. Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com

Manufactured in the United States and printed on acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48I992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Wood, Peter, 1953 author.

Title: 1620 : a critical response to the 1619 Project / Peter W. Wood.

Other titles: Critical response to the 1619 Project

Description: New York, NY : Encounter Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020032266 (print) | LCCN 2020032267 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781641771245 (cloth) | ISBN 9781641771252 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: SlaveryUnited StatesHistory. | United States

HistoryStudy and teaching. | 1619 Project. | United StatesHistoriography. | Critical pedagogy.

Classification: LCC E441.W873 2020 (print) | LCC E441 (ebook) | DDC 306.3/620973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032266

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032267

CONTENTS

PRELIMINARIES

WHAT IS THE 1619 PROJECT?

O N SUNDAY, August 18, 2019, the New York Times published a special issue of The New York Times Magazine announcing The 1619 Project. Along with the 100-page magazine, the New York Times released a sixteen-page newsprint section under the same title and headlined Weve Got to Tell the Unvarnished Truth, quoting the late historian John Hope Franklin.

On the opening page of the magazine, Jake Silverstein, the Times editor in chief, stated the projects aim:

The goal of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times that this issue of the magazine inaugurates, is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nations 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.

Reframing the countrys history is an extraordinarily ambitious goal, and not something one would ordinarily expect to come from a newspaper. The Times, however, is not the least bit circumspect in announcing it. The 1619 Project is, in other words, an all-out effort to replace traditional conceptions of American history with a history refracted through the lens of black identity politics.

This approach goes far beyond the case for teaching African American Studies in colleges or making sure that black history is integrated in school curricula. Instead of asserting the need to add to traditional American history a fuller account of the black experience, the 1619 Project calls for replacing that traditional account with one that makes the black experience primary and not just for black Americans, but for all Americans.