The 1619 Project

93 pages • 3 hours read

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

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Introduction

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

During Reading

Reading Questions & Paired Texts

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

PREFACE-CHAPTER 2

Reading Check

1. Which historical event changed Nikole Hannah-Jones’s perspective on Black history when she learned about it?

2. Whom does the text call the original freedom fighters of America’s democracy?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What goal for the 1619 Project does Hannah-Jones lay out in the book’s preface?

2. What does the text claim motivated Virginians to declare independence from Great Britain?

3. What is the purpose of the Chapter 2 anecdote about Ashley Ramkishun and Samuel Sarfo’s 2019 marriage license application?

Paired Resource

20 and Odd: Africans’ Arrival in 1619

This 27-minute documentary tells the story of the Africans who arrived on the White Lion.
This resource relates to the theme of 1619 as America’s True Founding.
How and why does this documentary attempt to humanize these distant historical figures? What additional information did you learn from this film? Would any of this additional information have strengthened or weakened the arguments Nikole Hannah-Jones makes in this section of the book, or is this information extraneous to her arguments?

CHAPTERS 3-4

Reading Check

1. What commodity is referred to as “white gold”?

2. Whose 2020 murder sparked the Black Lives Matter protests discussed in Chapter 4?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Aside from its economic impacts, what other impacts does the text discuss sugar having on modern American life?

2. What point does the text illustrate by contrasting the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and the January 6th insurrection at the United States’ Capitol?

3. What positive shift in cultural attitudes during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests does the text acknowledge?

Paired Resource

“Understanding the History of Policing in America and Police Violence Against Black Communities”

This article from People for the American Way offers a historical overview of discriminatory policing in the United States.
This resource relates to the themes of Violence Against Black Americans and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
How would you compare the effectiveness of this article’s argument against the effectiveness of the argument offered in Chapter 4 of The 1619 Project?

“The Lancet: More than Half of Police Killings in USA are Unreported and Black Americans are Most Likely to Experience Fatal Police Violence”

This article shares research into the true scope of the problem of police violence against Black Americans.
This resource relates to the themes of Violence Against Black Americans and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
What does underreporting police violence indicate about systems of power in the United States? How might this specific structural inequality increase the climate of fear and impact everyday life for Black Americans?

“How Unjust Police Killings Damage the Mental Health of Black Americans”

This interview with researcher David R. Williams, published by The Harvard Gazette, explains the psychological and physical health impacts that police violence has on the Black community in America.
This resource relates to the themes of Violence Against Black Americans and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
What are the major findings of Williams’s research? After looking at Indigenous communities, what conclusion has Williams come to about community choices that can offset the stresses caused by discrimination? How might this advice be paradoxical in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests?

CHAPTERS 5-7

Reading Check

1. Which Indigenous nation signed the Treaty of Hopewell?

2. In the Chapter 6 essay “Capitalism,” what pejorative label does Desmond use to describe the American economic system?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does the Treaty of Hopewell illustrate both similarities and differences in the United States government’s treatment of Black and Indigenous people?

2. What contemporary effects of the colonial desire to protect the institution of enslavement does Desmond mention in “Capitalism”?

3. According to Bouie, what common motivation and purpose underlie movements like the Tea Party during Obama’s presidency and the January 6 insurrection of 2021?

CHAPTERS 8-10

Reading Check

1. What group of Black activists met on July 6, 1853?

2. In colonial America, which Black people were prohibited from carrying a weapon?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why was the passage of the 14th Amendment important for freed Black people who wanted to remain in the United States?

2. How does the murder of Trayvon Martin illustrate inequalities in the application of self-defense laws?

3. What is the central argument of Bryan Stevenson’s chapter “Punishment”?

Paired Resource

“American History, Race, and Prison”

This report from the Vera Institute of Justice explores both the roots and impacts of the American justice system’s inequalities.
This resource relates to the themes of 1619 as America’s True Founding, Violence Against Black Americans, and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
How does this report make clear the links between enslavement and mass incarceration? Which other ideas in The 1619 Project’s essays are echoed in this report?

CHAPTERS 11-14

Reading Check

1. What post–Civil War program promised Black people access to education, banking, and land?

2. What phrase used by Reverend Jeremiah Wright caused a scandal to erupt around President Obama?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What point does the text use the story of Elmore Bolling to illustrate?

2. What point does the text use the story of Dr. Susan Moore to illustrate?

3. What point does the text use the example of Black music to illustrate?

Paired Resource

“Not Just Tulsa: Race Massacres that Devastated Black Communities in Rosewood, Atlanta, and Other American Cities”

This BET article uses text, illustrations, and videos to profile several towns where white violence brought an end to Black prosperity.
This resource relates to the themes of Violence Against Black Americans and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
How do the stories in this article reinforce claims made in The 1619 Project about the use of racialized violence to control Black people and enforce White economic dominance?

CHAPTERS 15-16

Reading Check

1. What government agency was created in the post-Civil-War era to offer support to the formerly enslaved?

2. What city’s traffic problems does Kruse use to illustrate how historical racism has impacted infrastructure?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What criticisms were leveled against the government’s attempts to help the formerly enslaved with their health concerns?

2. How have historical barriers to Black people’s participation in professional fields impacted Black people’s access to and representation in medical care?

3. What assertion does Kruse’s essay “Traffic” make about the relationship between racism and the lack of public transportation in the United States?

CHAPTERS 17-18

Reading Check

1. To what period of American history does Kendi trace the use of “progress” as an anti-progressive propaganda tool?

2. What does Hannah-Jones point to as the force that “most effectively maintains racial caste today”? (457)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What critique of the American idea of progress does Kendi offer, as it pertains to racial justice?

2. In the book’s concluding essay, what shift in perspective does Hannah-Jones call necessary to genuine progress and justice?

3. What solution to the wealth gap do activists advocate for, and what historical precedents do they suggest make this solution viable?

Recommended Next Reads

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 ed. by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

This anthology of essays and poems offers diverse authors’ perspectives—some professional historians and some not—on Black American history and experience from 1619 to 2019.
Shared themes include 1619 as America’s True Founding, Violence Against Black Americans, and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
Shared topics include nonfiction, essay and poetry collection, Black history, American history, structural racism, Black American culture, and the personal experiences of contemporary Black Americans.
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America on SuperSummary

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson combines history with narrative nonfiction to trace the effects of systemic racism from 1619 to the present day in an extended argument that the United States has a de facto caste system.
Shared themes include 1619 as America’s True Founding, Violence Against Black Americans, and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
Shared topics include nonfiction, Black history, American history, structural racism, Black American culture, and the personal experiences of contemporary Black Americans.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents on SuperSummary

The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy

Sociologist and cultural historian Paul Gilroy critiques the limitations of understanding history through the lenses of nationalism and ethnic absolutism and proposes a reframing of modernity as the result of cultural exchange resulting from the African diaspora.
Shared themes include 1619 as America’s True Founding, Violence Against Black Americans, and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
Shared topics include nonfiction, Black history, American history, structural racism, and Black American culture.
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness on SuperSummary

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This 2015 National Book Award–winning work connects the long history of brutality and discrimination against Black Americans to contemporary structural issues and misconceptions about the Black experience.
Shared themes include Violence Against Black Americans and The Meaning of Freedom to Black Americans.
Shared topics include nonfiction, Black history, American history, structural racism, Black American culture, and the personal experiences of contemporary Black Americans.
Between the World and Me on SuperSummary

Recommended Companion Media

The 1619 Project Docuseries

This 6-episode companion docuseries approaches the 1619 Project as a series of key topics: “Democracy,” “Race,” “Music,” “Capitalism,” “Fear,” and “Justice.” Note that access to Hulu is required to view this docuseries.
This viewing guide from the Pulitzer Education Materials Collection contains discussion guides and other materials broken down by grade level.

The 1619 Project Podcast

This 6-episode companion podcast discusses 5 key ideas from the 1619 Project: “The Fight for a True Democracy,” “The Economy That Slavery Built,” “The Birth of American Music,” “How the Bad Blood Started,” and “The Land of Our Fathers.”
This listening guide from the Pulitzer Education Materials Collection contains discussion guides and other materials broken down by grade level.

Reading Questions Answer Key

PREFACE-CHAPTER 2

Reading Check

1. The White Lion’s 1619 landing (Preface)

2. Black Americans (Chapter 1)

Short Answer

1. Nikole Hannah-Jones declares that the goal of the 1619 Project is to increase understanding of both American history and America’s current reality so that America can “become the country [it] claim[s] to be” (xxxii). (Preface)

2. It says that Virginians declared independence to preserve the institution of enslavement after Virginia’s royal governor, John Murray, threatened to free the enslaved residents of the colony. (Chapter 1)

3. This anecdote illustrates how colonial laws governing race and sex continue to impact Americans even in modern times. (Chapter 2)

CHAPTERS 3-4

Reading Check

1. Sugar (Chapter 3)

2. George Floyd (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

1. Sugar consumption in America is very high, leading to adverse health outcomes; sugary products often take up shelf space needed for more nutritious foods in areas with limited shelf space, contributing to the creation of food deserts. (Chapter 3)

2. Police responses to the Black Lives Matter protests were often heavy-handed and violent, in sharp contrast to their response to the events at the Capitol on January 6. This illustrates the text’s point that the system is more fearful of Black rebellion and more prone to respond violently. (Chapter 4)

3. Since people from varying racial and cultural backgrounds participated in these protests, the text acknowledges that a shift away from racialized patterns of fear may be underway. (Chapter 4)

CHAPTERS 5-7

Reading Check

1. The Cherokee (Chapter 5)

2. “Low-road capitalism” (Chapter 6)

Short Answer

1. The signing of the treaty indicates that the United States government viewed Indigenous people as capable of self-government and deserving of at least some autonomy, unlike enslaved Black people, who were legally classed as property. Despite these differences, the breaking of the treaty, and subsequent brutality against Indigenous people, makes clear that their marginally higher position in the American caste system did not protect Indigenous peoples from systemic violence and oppression. (Chapter 5)

2. Desmond mentions that modern economic inequality and the sometimes inefficient structure of American government are both artifacts of the colonial desire to protect enslavement. (Chapter 6)

3. Bouie uses the Tea Party and the January 6 insurrection as examples of how populist movements arise among white Americans to question the government and democratic decision-making whenever there is a perceived threat to their power. (Chapter 7)

CHAPTERS 8-10

Reading Check

1. The Colored National Convention (Chapter 8)

2. All of them (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

1. The passage of the 14th Amendment gave birthright citizenship to anyone born in the United States. This was a positive development for Black people freed from enslavement, because up until this time they were free but not considered citizens. (Chapter 8)

2. While Black Americans are often unable to use self-defense laws to protect themselves from prosecution if they attempt to stop a white person from harming them, Trayvon Martin was an innocent Black teenager simply walking through a majority-white neighborhood when he was murdered under the pretense of self-defense. His killer was not convicted. (Chapter 9)

3. Although slave codes were technically made obsolete by the end of enslavement, the same violent “punishments” used to control Black people evolved into new forms, such as lynchings and other racialized violence. Today, mass incarceration is a de facto continuation of this same control technique. (Chapter 10)

CHAPTERS 11-14

Reading Check

1. Reconstruction (Chapter 11)

2. “God damn America” (336) (Chapter 13)

Short Answer

1. Black citizens’ perpetual struggle to build stability and financial security after the end of enslavement in America has been repeatedly sabotaged by both legal and illegal violence aimed at preserving white dominance. (Chapter 11)

2. Medical discrimination against Black people continues into the present day and has serious, sometimes fatal, consequences. (Chapter 12)

3. The historical traditions, creativity, and ingenuity of Black culture are at the core of American culture. (Chapter 14)

CHAPTERS 15-16

Reading Check

1. The Freedmen’s Bureau (Chapter 15)

2. Atlanta’s (Chapter 16)

Short Answer

1. Critics claimed that government assistance would create dependence and that, in any case, the health problems Black people were experiencing were an inevitable result of their own constitutions, which were unsuited to freedom. (Chapter 15)

2. Because of institutional barriers to Black participation in the medical field, Black perspectives have been underrepresented in medicine. Because of the employer-based healthcare system and barriers to Black participation in professional fields, Black people have often lacked access to health insurance. (Chapter 15)

3. Kruse asserts that white Americans have blocked the development of public transportation, because they do not want tax dollars to pay for Black people’s transportation. (Chapter 16)

CHAPTERS 17-18

Reading Check

1. Colonial America (Chapter 17)

2. The wealth gap/economic inequality (Chapter 18)

Short Answer

1. Although progress has undoubtedly been achieved, focusing on the overall trajectory of that progress ignores periodic steps backward that have real consequences for Black Americans. (Chapter 17)

2. Americans must modify their myths and narratives about the country’s roots to incorporate an understanding of Black people as “democracy’s defenders and perfecters” (452). (Chapter 18)

3. Activists call for economic reparations as a means to close the wealth gap, pointing out that the government has historically created such programs to support Holocaust survivors and Japanese concentration camp victims. (Chapter 18)