The New York Times' 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History

The book features interviews with renowned scholars Gordon Wood, James M. McPherson, James Oakes, Victoria Bynum, Richard Carwardine, Clayborne Carson, Adolph Reed Jr., and Dolores Janiewski.

Historical essays bring forward the world-historic impact of the American Revolution and Civil War, and demonstrate the decisive role of class struggle in those events and subsequent history. A series of polemics expose the New York Times’ efforts to cover for factual errors in the 1619 Project.

An introduction by David North argues for the concept of objective truth, not only in the interpretation of history, but in science and art as well, against the relativization promoted under theories of racial identity, “whiteness,” and “critical race theory.”

An Afterward, “Trump’s 1776 Travesty”, exposes the nationalist myth-making at the heart of the right-wing critique of the 1619 Project and the Project itself, grounded in racialist theory.

As Walter Benn Michaels puts it, “Everyone interested in understanding what happened then and what’s actually happening now needs to read it.”

Thomas Mackaman is a historian at Kings College in Pennsylvania, author of New Immigrants and the Radicalization of American Labor, 1914-1924; he is a regular contributor to the World Socialist Web Site.