Venecia Abigale Ferguson

Poli 207 Black Politics

Dr. Shiela Harmon Martin

1619 Reflection
 1

The 1619 Project is a series of essays from the New York Times that aims to reframe the

narrative surrounding the establishment of The United States as well as the legacy of slavery.

The project affirms that 1619, when the first African Slaves were brought to the shores of what is

now The United States, and not 1776 should be the preeminent date for the nation’s founding. It

aims to center the contributions of Black Americans as integral to the development of The

United States.

The podcast begins with an introductory essay from Nikole Hannah-Jones detailing

growing up in Iowa, and her father’s insistence on having a pristine American flag outside their

home at all times. Her father had grown up in a family of sharecroppers in Mississippi, where

men were being lynched at a higher rate than the rest of the country, they could not vote, and

jobs were hard to come by. Like many African Americans at the time, her family left the south in

search of better lives and economic opportunities, only to find that they could not outrun the

discrimination of the American system. Her father joined the Army at 17 where he, again, saw

that his race and not work ethic was the major barrier to getting ahead. Because of this,

Hannah-Jones could not understand her father’s dedication to this flag, and the country that time

and time again deemed them as second class citizens. But as she says, her father knew the full

extent of how the Black American was intrinsically rooted in both the founding of the country

and their contributions were integral to the building of The United States.

One of the parts of this first segment that stood out to me was Nikole Hannah-Jones’ first

encounter in school with the idea of “identity.” One of the greatest functions of slavery that

continue to this day is the separation of Africans from their history and their identity. More than
 2

the physical transport of people across the ocean to this new continent, and the cruelty of slavery,

they erased the connection to their roots and culture. Because of the Atlantic Slave Trade and

chattel slavery, I think this is a unique struggle in the Black diaspora, and especially for African

Americans. The legacy of slavery has only served to exacerbate this issue. Even after being

emancipated, Black Americans were never fully able to assimilate into society and into this term

of being “American.” The sustained discrimination on every level in this country has persistently

defined and redefined citizenship in ways designed to exclude African Americans. Black

Americans cannot be at home in their own country and also have had the connection to their

ancestry completely erased.

The United States was founded by people looking to escape the tyranny of British rule,

and supposedly with the Liberal ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas

Jefferson, an original Founding Father and the principal author of the Declaration of

Independence wrote in that document that all men created equal. Hannah-Jones points to his

blatant hypocrisy, that while writing these words and advocating for these “rights,” he owned

slaves, and even going as far as to enslave his own children. Hannah-Jones argues that a

principal reason that the colonists decided to secede from Britain and create their own union, was

in order to sustain this practice of chattel slavery. Years later, as Lincoln was reconsidering his

stance on African American citizenship, he invited a few leaders to the White House to discuss

the issue and offered to help relocate the Black population to another country after the war. This

was one of the few things that surprised me in this podcast, and it really highlights the failings of

the American schooling system in teaching history. Abraham Lincoln is known as the Great

Emancipator. We are taught that he was against slavery, and was such a champion for the rights
 3

of the enslaved when in actuality he was a man of the times. He did not see those enslaved Black

individuals as equals, deserving proper citizenship. After multiple generations of living and

working on American soil, his solution was to relocate them elsewhere yet again.

Years later, during the Reconstruction, African Americans worked hard to engage in the

democratic process. They ran for and won seats in multiple states, and advocated for multiple

laws ensuring their equality under United States law. This was a time of great improvement in

the lives of many, and it was met with a lot of resistance from white southerners. As a response,

the federal government retracted its aid to the Black population, leading to poor white

southerners being the main beneficiaries of the reconstruction policies. This leads to another

story, where we are given the account of a young man, Isaac Woodard, who served 4 years in the

army, and on the day he returned home to South Carolina he got into an argument with a bus

driver. He was kicked off the bus, only to find a few white officers awaiting him. They beat

Woodward so badly that he lost his eyesight. Hannah-Jones reveals that there was nothing

atypical about this tale of discrimination. This rigid caste system was maintained, even for

service members and veterans, who put their lives on the line in hopes of attaining full

citizenship and economic opportunities.

Another segment of the 1619 podcast that spoke to me personally was a later episode that

focused on the healthcare system and the treatment it gives to African Americans. The essay

focuses on Hannah-Jones’ uncle who had cancer, and because he did not have insurance, he was

not given a proper diagnosis until much later when the cancer was found to be terminal. Later in

an interview, we learn about the state of healthcare right at the moment of emancipation. Because

of a lack of doctors, lack of care, and lack of government funding these newly freed slaves were
 4

dying at a high rate, and their bodies were just left to rot in the streets. President Truman had

proposed a national healthcare plan that would be beneficial not only to these African Americans

but also to the many poor white Americans, who did not have adequate healthcare at the time;

yet was met with intense opposition. It was not until 1964 with the passing of The Civil Rights

Act that made it unconstitutional for hospitals to discriminate on the basis of race, medicare

finally becoming a reality, that hospitals began to desegregate. This did not lead to equal care,

and even to this day African Americans still fare worse in medical settings than their white

counterparts.

Personally, I have a type of sickle cell disease which primarily affects those with ancestry

in Africa and Southeast Asia. Because of this, I have crises where I am in intense pain and have

had multiple instances in the past few years where I have had to seek care in emergency rooms.

There is an incredible stigma, and I have seen it first hand, of Black patients especially in terms

of pain management and medication. I have also read multiple articles and studies that show that

to this day, many doctors believe that Black people do not feel the same levels of pain as white

patients. There continues to be a huge disparity in the care that Black patients get in hospitals and

other medical settings, which leads to higher death rates for the same illnesses as well as higher

infant mortality rates.

The last episode of the podcast chronicles the struggle of a Louisiana farmer, June,

attempting to acquire a crop loan from a local bank. June had inherited his father’s farm and

every year attempted to get a crop loan at the beginning of the sugar cane season to finance his

operation. Every year the bank would delay his loan, and would not give him the amount he had
 5

asked for, setting June up to fail. This segment discusses a contemporary issue that many Black

Americans know continues to affect the community, and also shows the systemic ways that

banks and other corporations can use their power to discriminate. The podcast tells this one story,

but every day, all over the country there are other men and women in similar situations to June,

who are denied and given limited opportunities.

Through this series of essays, Nikole Hannah-Jones attempts to rethink how we approach

American history. Re-establishing the founding of the country to the beginning of the American

colonies, and following the narrative of Black Americans from then to the present day, we are

made to acknowledge the centrality of Black people to the foundation of this country. She

displays the treatment and discrimination that was integral to the founding of this country and

has persevered for those 400 years.