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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. On this July 4th weekend, we're bring you a relevant re-run from our archives.
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Basu: Nikole, I thought we would start with something a little bit different, kinda like a speed round. So, I'm gonna go through the first dozen or so presidents of the United States, and I want you to tell me whether they enslaved people or not. Okay?
Basu: George Washington.
Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: John Adams.
Hannah-Jones: No.
Basu: Thomas Jefferson.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: James Madison.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: James Monroe.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: John Quincy Adams.
Hannah-Jones: No.
Basu: Andrew Jackson.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: Martin van Buren.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: William Henry Harrison.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: John Tyler.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu: James K Polk.
Hannah-Jones: I believe so. Yes.
Basu: Zachary Taylor.
Hannah-Jones: Yes.
Basu, Narrating: Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for "The New York Times Magazine" and the creator of the 1619 Project. If you're not familiar with the project, it establishes an important date that isn't mentioned in many history books: 1619, the beginning of American slavery, the year the first people were brought from Africa to the United States and sold to the colonists. This project called for a reframing of American history around this starting point. Now, Nikole has expanded on the idea and turned it into a book, called "The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story."
The 1619 Project, and Nikole Hannah-Jones herself, have been the targets of fierce conservative backlash.
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Ben Shapiro: The basic premise of the 1619 Project was that American history was founded in evil and basically that evil has infused the body politic and every aspect of American life.
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Tucker Carlson: That project is the work of an out-of-the-closet racial extremist called Nikole Hannah-Jones.
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Carol Swain: They are indoctrinating our students with false ideas.
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Tom Cotton: The 1619 Project wants to indoctrinate America's kids and teach them to hate America, to believe that America was founded not on human freedom but on racism, to think that slavery was not an aberration but the true heart of America.
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Basu, Narrating: Nikole would probably agree with that last point: slavery is at the heart of America's founding story. But she comes to a different conclusion than her critics claim, one that is not about hating this country for its sins, but rather about recognizing our harms as part of our history. That's the only way this country will be able to live up to the ideals we say we're built on.
In my conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones, we talk about what's in this new, expanded edition of the 1619 Project, and why she says it's important to know that the people who ran our country from the very beginning, 10 of our first 12 presidents, enslaved people.
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Hannah-Jones: It means something that the most powerful men in the nascent years of establishing a country, that nearly all of them engaged in the institution of slavery. We would understand that meant something if it was any particular occupation, and enslaving was an occupation. This was how these men got the wealth and the education and the status and the stature to become presidents of the brand-new country. So, when we think about that our politics… And we could do this with the Supreme Court, we could do this with the men who are considered the founders, who signed the Declaration, with the men who sat in the Constitutional Congress. And if we understand that so many of the people who were shaping the politics and the policies of our brand-new nation were also people who relied upon slavery for their wealth and power, I think that fundamentally alters your understanding of the country.
Basu: Mm. And even talking about them as "enslavers," I mean, there's some very deliberate language choices that you make in this book. For example, using "enslaved person" instead of the word "slave," violence against enslaved people is often referred to as "white terrorism" in this book. How did you want language to function in this project?
Hannah-Jones: We understand as journalists that words and word choice are very powerful and that the words you use can either illuminate or they can obscure. And we have used language to obscure the horrors of slavery, the atrocity of slavery, the choice of slavery. So, when we think about someone like George Washington, and we call him a "planter," [CHUCKLES SLIGHTLY] as if he were out in the fields, planting tobacco. Planter is a euphemism. Planter allows us to imagine that this was not a man who was running a forced-labor camp, which is also a choice of language that we use in the 1619 Project.
Basu: Instead of plantation, right?
Hannah-Jones: Exactly.
Hannah-Jones: Who was not getting his wealth from the forced labor of human beings, who only worked for him because of the fear of violence and the use of violence and the threat of violence and other coercion. So, all of these words enable us to really downplay the horrors of slavery and the hypocrisy of founders, who said they were forging a new country based on individual and inalienable rights, and yet came to prominence by denying all of those rights to the human beings who gave them their wealth. So that is why the language really matters. If we called a plantation a forced-labor camp, which is what they were, definitionally, what they were, then I don't imagine it would be so easy to hold weddings and graduations and dances and parties on these places. The same way that you would never see that happening at a concentration camp in Poland or in Germany. So, the language covers the crime, and we want to expose the crime.
Basu: I've heard you say that we tend to think of American slavery as a racist institution, but first and foremost, slavery was an economic institution. And many of the arguments made in this book are about how slavery defined American institutions. So why is it an important distinction to make, to call it an economic institution first and foremost?
Hannah-Jones: Because we almost feel better about slavery if we think it wasn't necessary to the success of our nation. So many of us were kind of raised thinking that slavery was premodern, that slavery was an ineffective and inefficient form of labor, that it wasn't profitable. Which when you think about the type of propaganda it takes to believe that every single colonial power would be involved in the trade of human beings, would transport some 13 million human beings across the ocean for a venture that didn't make a lot of money, it's actually not logical. But that's how we've been taught to think about slavery. And so, if we just think about it as racist, then it almost feels more benign because it's about someone's feelings. And it's not about the very conscious, strategic and economic reasons that we engage in slavery. So, slavery, first and foremost, was an economic institution. It was about exploiting human beings for maximum profit, meaning you could turn human beings into a commodity that could be bought, sold, leveraged, mortgaged, collateralized in order to make a lot of money. But the way that you convince yourself that you are still good people and that you are a country based on freedom while engaging in slavery is you have to say, "These people are not human like we are. These people are less than we are. These people don't feel pain the way that we feel pain. And in fact, if they don't have slavery, they can't even take care of themselves. We are civilizing these uncivilized people through the institution of slavery." So, racism comes to justify the economic exploitation of African people.
Basu: I was hoping we could talk also about another American institution shaped by slavery that's talked about in this book, which is policing. And I'm thinking specifically - I mean, I know it was addressed in multiple places - but I'm thinking of the essay written by sisters Leslie Alexander, right, the historian, and Michelle Alexander, the legal scholar. And they draw these links between the way that enslaved people who rebelled were policed and the way that today's protestors for racial justice have been met with militarized police forces in cities across America. So, can you talk a little bit about that chapter?
Hannah-Jones: Absolutely. So that is the chapter called "Fear," and it's really trying to help us understand where this innate fear of Black people comes from. The type of fear that allows unarmed Black people to be killed, and the people who killed them to get off because Black people are so frightening that even if you have a weapon, you are not the aggressor. So, where does that come from? And what's important is, we must understand people do not submit to slavery and the people who were enslaving Black people knew that at any chance, Black people would run away. They feared that Black people would try to hurt them in order to get their freedom, the same way that the colonists fought and used violence to get their own freedom from the British. And so, Black people came to be seen as this, quote unquote, "internal enemy" of people who were living in the midst of white Americans because white Americans were dependent upon them for their labor, but who were always plotting against them. And so, you get this system of the slave patrols. And the slave patrols and slave law, slave codes deputize any white person who can stop any Black person at any time and question that person, demand their papers, make sure that that Black person is where he or she is supposed to be, and that is what has to undergird the entire system of slavery. So, you have these kind of twin ideas of constant surveillance and fear. And we still see that, right? Like, how many stories do we see of what we kind of colloquially now would call the "Karens," right? Any white person who sees a Black person where they don't think the Black person should be, bird watching, walking in the wrong neighborhood, and the sense that I have a right to stop and question you because Black people are suspicious and likely to be doing something they're not supposed to be doing or being where they're not supposed to be. You saw this with Ahmaud Arbery. So, this essay really traces both the modern police force, which, at least in the South, comes directly out of the slave patrols - I mean, they even had badges in the slave patrols - and also this idea of having to surveil and control. And the right of any white person to question any Black person comes out of the history of slavery.
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Basu, Narrating: The essay by Leslie and Michelle Alexander also brings up the Haitian Revolution and the role it played in stoking fear of Black revolt in the United States. The revolution in Haiti began on August 22nd, 1791 when enslaved people on what was then the island of Saint-Domingue revolted against the French colonists. And it worked. More than a decade later, the island became a sovereign state, slavery in the new nation was abolished, and Haiti became the first country to be founded by formerly enslaved people. This was the most successful revolt of enslaved people in modern history, and yet the Haitian Revolution is mostly not taught in American schools.
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Hannah-Jones: So we all learn about the French Revolution, but we do not learn about the Haitian Revolution. And of course, there's a reason for that because in the Haitian Revolution, enslaved people rise up against their masters and overthrow their enslavers and bankrupt Napoleon. It's the reason that the United States is able to purchase the Louisiana territory, more than doubling the size of the United States, for bargain rates. It's because of these Black people, who had been brought to Haiti in slavery, overthrow their enslavers. And why are we not taught about that? One, because they end slavery on their own, almost 70 years before the United States does so with a war. And you get this free Black republic in a sea of slave colonies. Every other colony is surrounding Haiti, including the colonies of the United States, and they are all engaging in slavery. So, we don't learn about that story because it stands in stark contrast to the story we want to tell ourselves as Americans, which is: We were the first liberators. We were the first people to believe in abolition. Actually, African people who were enslaved were the first abolitionists, and the Haitian Revolution shows that. Many of those white Haitians, the French, actually come to the United States. They flee Haiti and they bring their enslaved people with them to the United States. And then those people, having just gone through a revolution, begin to share that information with enslaved people in America and saying, "You can overthrow your masters." And that begins, of course, to stoke a great deal of fear and a really violent repression of Black life after that revolution.
Basu: You know, that brings me to my next point because you talk a lot in the book about the experience of being a student and your school days and learning history and just how much was left out and how baffling that was for you, even when you were younger. But it made me think about the way that we still continue to learn history and the fact that history is taught as a sort of absolute subject. Right? It's taught alongside math, which has a right answer and a wrong answer. Why is it so challenging to approach history as something that should be open to interpretation, and that interpretation should be open to change over time?
Hannah-Jones: That's such a great question. And that's clearly why the biggest controversy over the 1619 Project is one line, in one essay about the American Revolution and slavery. Why, of the thousands and thousands of words in the project, is that the thing that made people so angry and that they held in such disbelief? And it's because there's this sense that if this were in fact true, if slavery had anything to do with the revolution, we would've learned it. So, it must not be true because no one ever taught us that. And that's why it's important to examine when we're talking about history, what do we mean? There's the field of history, the field of historiography, where scholars are engaging in scholarship, and they understand that all history is revision. Otherwise, you wouldn't need to have historians because everything would already have been written. And we'd know everything that there is to know about to past. So, we tend to think of history as: this happened on this day, at this time, and this is why, and it's settled. But that's not actually true. Right? And what the history that most of us learn is a manipulated history. It is a history in service of nationalism. It is a history in service of patriotism. And so, it is a curated history that's designed to really uphold the image of America that we want to have about ourselves. And that's a very curated history. But we tend to think that there's one meaning, one truth, one set of facts. And of course, that could never be the case. One, we could never know all that there is to be known. And, as I say in the opening essay of the book, history is not just what we learn about who and when and why, but it's what we don't learn. It's all the people we don't learn about. It's all of the events that aren't held up, that are kind of erased from our national memory. And then so much of history is interpretive. To this day, scholars dual about whether the Constitution of the United States was pro-slavery or anti-slavery. Now they're all looking at the same set of facts. They're looking at the same actors. They're looking at the same text. And yet, you can come to vastly different conclusions about that document, depending on how you interpret what was happening back then. And I think if anything good can come out of the debates around this project - well, I hope a lot of good can come from the debates - is that we have to understand that history as a field and our understanding of history is about interpretation, and it's about power. It's about who gets to choose what we remember and who gets to decide what we forget.
Basu: You know, Nikole, that brings me to my next question for you, which is about patriotism. Because what's so striking to me, I mean, a common criticism of the book and of you is that it's anti-American, it's unpatriotic. But if anyone actually spent even a minute reading any content in the book, they would know that it is very patriotic. In fact, it makes the argument for patriotism specifically for African Americans in this country. I guess I wanna know from you, what does patriotism mean to you? Because it feels like different people claim it in different ways. And this book strikes me, or at least your writing in this book strikes me as a sort of reclamation of the word "patriotism" that isn't about blind, uncritical love of country.
Hannah-Jones: Yes. So, I'm deeply conflicted even about my own essay [LAUGHS] and arguments that I make. I'm conflicted about, what does patriotism look like for a people who are only here because of slavery? Who didn't choose or want to be a part of America but were forced. And because we were forced have then tried to carve out our space in this country. And the criticism from the left, of course, is that my essay is too patriotic. So, it has been fascinating that some people have read my essay as being anti-American because it clearly couldn't be further from the truth. The arguments in my essay are that despite everything that this country has done to Black people, Black people have believed in this nation's highest ideals and have fought harder than any other group, as a group, to bring those ideals to fruition. And I think that is patriotism. The idea that patriotism is unquestioning, that patriotism is uncritical, that patriotism says, "love my country, good or bad," as opposed to saying, "The highest faith and belief in a country is to say we are better than this. And we have to try to improve the lives of our fellow citizens to live up to the majestic ideals of the Declaration." I can't tell you how many times I get, and I imagine you've probably gotten this yourself a time or two, when you criticize something for people to say, "If you don't like it, just leave it." To me, anyone who would say the answer to problems in your country is to abandon your country is clearly not a patriot, and anyone to call on people to abandon their country as opposed to trying to improve their country are also not patriots. So even though I'm conflicted, I do think we have to reclaim this idea of what patriotism is and who gets to be patriotic. And the fact that Black Americans have consistently fought for all marginalized people, I can't imagine a higher level of patriotism than that.
Basu: Mm. So much has happened since you first published the magazine feature. How did the events of the past two years inform what you wanted to include by the time this book came out?
Hannah-Jones: In terms of the subject areas, I don't think that they've influenced it much at all. Because what was really important… and we were very careful not to make really much of this book about Trump or what's happening in our politics right now because we think that the arguments are not about one moment in time. They would've been true 10 years ago. They'll be true 10 years from now. So, we didn't want it to feel like we were writing to the moment. But what has shaped the project in the last two years has been the criticism. I had a very… and I know our entire editorial team had a very sincere desire to speak to the criticism that was made in good faith, to answer it, to strengthen the arguments, to show our rigor, to consult more experts. I actually think an amazing part of scholarship is to put something out into the world, to have it critiqued by brilliant minds, and then to use that critique to improve the work, which is what people in the profession of historiography do all of the time. So that has been the way that we have responded to what's happened in the last two years. And frankly, that was the most enjoyable part to me because one, I took it as a challenge. And I always say I get my revenge through study and writing. And it was just a tremendous opportunity to just learn more and read more. And they actually sharpened my weapons.
Basu: One last quick thought for you, which is just, it's called a project because it's ongoing. If you had to revisit this in 50 years and write the chapter of now, what would be crucial to understand about this moment?
Hannah-Jones: Ooh. [SIGHS] I think that… I know that we are in a very dangerous moment in American history, as someone who has studied the history of this country more than half of my life and who has particularly studied the fact that we have not had a democracy, a true democracy or a semblance of democracy, except for 60 years, that for the vast history of our country, the idea of democracy was a democracy for white people and the violent suppression of a multiracial democracy. If you look at where we are right now with the largest wave of voter suppression laws that we've seen since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, which is when we got true democracy, if you look at all of these laws being passed to ban books and to prohibit laws, to prohibit the teaching of ideas that people don't like, if you look at…
Basu: Including your own book.
Hannah-Jones: Including my book by name. What's happening with the Supreme Court and that settled case law, for instance, around women's reproductive rights is now up for challenge, that Kyle Rittenhouse got standing ovation at a conservative rally for killing two other Americans. I think our democracy has always been precarious. And I think that if you look at those who study fascism, authoritarianism, who are trying to ring the alarm about the dangers of the moment that we're in, the chapter that we write may be about how we entered the second great nadir, how we gained our rights and we lost them again. And I'm not being hyperbolic at all. I really fear that that may be the story that we write about this moment 50 years from now.
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Basu: Nikole Hannah-Jones, thank you so much for your time and for your book.
Hannah-Jones: Thank you.
Basu, Narrating: "The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story" created by Nikole Hannah-Jones is available now on Apple Books. You can find a link on our show notes page.
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