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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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-18

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “‘Punishment’ by Bryan Stevenson”

Stevenson opens the chapter by describing his work with a legal aid organization that helps assist people who have been wrongly convicted or who are on death row. The United States, a country with the highest rate of incarceration, has a history of disproportionately imprisoning Black Americans. Stevenson argues that this discrepancy is directly tied to slavery. According to Stevenson, the imprisonment of Black Americans is part of the American tradition. When slavery was abolished, the ideologies that justified the bondage of Black people were transferred to criminality. Stevenson describes these ideologies as “[t]he true evil of American slavery, which was the belief that Black people are less evolved, less human, less capable, less deserving, less trustworthy than white people” (279). Laws governing enslaved laborers now governed free Black people. Stevenson adds that, as Black citizens gained rights and fought for their place in American society, white racism fought back.

White mobs acted with impunity against Black Americans; it seemed no offense was too small to incite violence. In 1916, Anthony Crawford, a South Carolina farmer, refused to accept an under-market price for his cotton, and he was lynched. Stevenson claims that mass incarceration, inflated by the war on drugs and strict policies of surveillance and punishment, replaced slavery.

November 10, 1898

A biracial local government is established in Wilmington, North Carolina, but a white mob destroys Black businesses, murders Black people, and drives the rest from the city. It is the only successful coup in American history.

“Race Riot” by Forrest Hamer

In this poem, the speaker highlights the importance and violence of the riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, and notes that schools do not teach it. The speaker suggests that the riots occurred because white people were uncomfortable with the success of Black Americans: “the Negro / had become unruly, needed instead to be ruled” (285).

May 31, 1921

A Black man is arrested for riding an elevator with a white woman. In response, a white mob burns down a thriving Black district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as Black Wall Street.

“Greenwood” by Jasmine Mans

In this poem, Mans draws attention to the boy in the elevator, a young man of 19, juxtaposing his youthfulness with the harsh violence of the Tulsa riots. When Black business owners filed insurance claims for their destroyed businesses and homes, their claims were denied.

Chapter 11 Summary: “‘Inheritance’ by Trymaine Lee”

Elmore Bolling was a successful businessperson in Montgomery, Alabama, during the late 1800s and early 1900s. After watching his father and grandfather lose their successful farm to a white man who decided the farm belonged to him, Bolling decided never to own property again. On leased land, Bolling grew his wealth and opened numerous successful businesses. He sent his children to schools in the city, believing a good education was their chance to build successful lives. However, when he decided to add a gas pump to his grocery store—a decision made after Bolling was refused service at a gas station nearby—he was attacked and killed by white men who believed he had overstepped. Traumatized by their father’s death, only one of Bolling’s children went to college.

Lee highlights the years following the Civil War and the efforts Black citizens made to build new lives. The federal government made promises to the newly freed citizens, including a parcel of land, access to food and housing, and a bank to support their financial endeavors. However, Lee notes that many white people were opposed to the idea of Black citizens gaining access to rights and wealth: “It was part of a broader social and political campaign to violently safeguard the racial hierarchy that had begun as a reaction to Reconstruction” (296). White mobs and white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, reigned terror on Black people for the slightest offenses in an effort to maintain power and to oppress Black citizens. The Tulsa Race Massacre captured national attention when a white mob attacked a successful Black district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, destroying businesses and killing innocent businessowners.

1925

Writer Alain Locke publishes an anthology of Black writers and poets, bringing attention to what is later referred to as the Harlem Renaissance.

“The New Negro” by A. Van Jordan

The speaker of this poem highlights the voices of Black artists and the depths from which Black voices emerge. In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker highlights the voice of a Black person who has been lynched. The crowd closes in on him to hear his whispered words.

1932

The United States Public Health Service injects more than 600 Black male subjects with syphilis in the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis. As a result, 128 men die, and many of their wives and children are infected with the disease.

“Bad Blood” by Yaa Gyasi

In this fictional story, a woman tells her husband that she wants to move after she finds her child playing with a tampon in the city’s park. She worries that her child will get an STD from the sanitary product. Her husband assures her that the risk is low, but the woman remembers the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis and wonders if she will ever feel safe.

Chapter 12 Summary: “‘Medicine’ by Linda Villarosa”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, doctor Susan Moore posted a video on social media while lying in the hospital. Her doctor, a white man, had refused to give her more antiviral medication and dismissed her early. A few weeks later, Moore died. Villarosa states that the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected Black Americans, noting the connection between air pollution and respiratory illness caused by the living conditions of many Black Americans. Villarosa also states that’s these linkages are rooted in a history of slavery and discrimination: “Black Americans are more likely to work in low-wage jobs and to live in segregated, crowded, polluted neighborhoods that lack adequate healthcare facilities” (317). However, Villarosa also points to the healthcare system and the history of medical practitioners to ignore or mistreat Black Americans.

Next, Villarosa notes that, for centuries, white scientists and doctors used racist justifications to support slavery and other discriminatory practices. Even Thomas Jefferson promoted false ideas about the difference between Black and white bodies, claiming that Black people require less sleep and have stronger glands that produce more odor. Villarosa claims that the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis, which occurred between 1932 and 1972, serves as a stark reminder of the continued mistreatment of Black people by the medical community.

August 28, 1955

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till is captured and killed by two white men in Mississippi. The men are acquitted by a jury made up of all white men; later, the two men admit their crime.

“1955” by Danez Smith

This poem highlights the pervasive impact of Emmett Till’s image: “his name wounds time / his face a knife sinking thru centuries” (325).

February 1, 1960

Four first-year students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sit at an all-whites counter at Woolworth’s in peaceful protest of segregation.

“From Behind the Counter” by Terry McMillan

McMillan’s story retells the day the four college students sat at the whites-only counter in Woolworth’s in protest of segregation. The story is told from a first-person perspective of a Black worker at the restaurant. The worker worries that the protest will make trouble for him and that he will be forced to watch law enforcement brutalize the four young men. Still, the worker admires them. At the end of the day, when everyone leaves, the worker sits at the whites-only counter and pours himself a cup of coffee.

Chapter 13 Summary: “‘Church’ by Anthea Butler”

Butler states that when Barack Obama ran for president, his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright caused some trouble. Wright was part of a proud tradition in Black churches of standing up for Black rights and progressivism. In a 2008 sermon, Wright challenged the continued oppression and destruction of Black people: “No, no, no. Not God bless America! God damn America!” (337). This quote, taken out of context, caused many to question Obama’s national loyalty. Butler explains that Wright represents part of a history of Black churches as spaces of advocacy, activism, and safety for Black people.

Butler claims that a history of violence against Black churches is a testament to white fear of the participation of Black people in a fair and equal democracy. Black churches are a combination of the religious beliefs brought by captive Africans to the United States and white Christianity. The Black Power movement emerged as a rejection of white Christianity and the nonviolent practices of many Black activists, including Martin Luther King Jr.

September 15, 1963

The Ku Klux Klan bombs a Baptist Church in Alabama. Four little girls die. The conspirators are not convicted until many years later; one dies before he can be tried.

“Youth Sunday” by Rita Dove

This poem is told in a first-person perspective form one of the young children who died in the Alabama bombing. The speaker is excited about her white dress and the opportunity to sing in front of the congregation.

“On Brevity” by Camille T. Dungy

The speaker looks down at her three-year-old daughter beside her in bed and thinks about the four girls who die in the Alabama bombing. She constructs a short poem, made up only of their names: “Addie Mae Collins. Cynthia Wesley. Carole Robertson. Denise McNair” (356).

Chapter 14 Summary: “‘Music’ by Wesley Morris”

The same week as the Alabama bombing, Motown Records produced a hit: “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas. Morris shows how Black music became synonymous with American music, repeatedly coopted by white artists. According to Morris, jazz music, emphasizing a spirit of improvisation that challenged traditional restrictions placed on music by white artists, exploded at the turn of the century. Motown Records was at the forefront of championing Black musicians and singers: “Art that emerged in poverty, from want, in despair, art forged in immoral quarantine, would take its place at the center of everything” (363).

Morris explains that Black people brought their own musical traditions with them when they arrived in America, including a cultural tradition of percussive rhythm. Combined with Spirituals—songs that emerged during slavery—soul and percussion combined to form a new genre: jazz. Morris explains that there is a history of appropriating Black culture America, a history that includes the rise of minstrelsy—a style of entertainment that consists of white singers adopting blackface and singing songs originating in Black culture.

August 6, 1965

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, protecting the rights outlined in the Fifteenth Amendment. The VRA outlaws Southern practices of intimidation and legal challenges to inhibit access to fundamental rights.

“Quotidian” by Natasha Trethewey

The speaker reads her mother’s diary, Mildred Loving, a Black woman who—with her husband—challenged a law prohibiting Black and white people to marry. The speaker of the poem is struck by the two sides of mother’s experience: the beauty of a new love and the minutiae of everyday life and the violent injustices that surrounded her.

October 15, 1966

Black Merritt College students create the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in response to police brutality. As part of their efforts, they establish a free breakfast program and medical clinic.

“The Panther is a Virtual Animal” by Joshua Bennett

In this poem, the speaker urges that anyone can be a panther so long as they are willing to care for others. The speaker suggests that central to the experience of being a panther is love.

Chapters 10-14 Analysis

Chapters 10-12 highlight three important arenas in which Slavery’s Pervasive Impact on American Institutions impacted the lives and experiences of Black citizens, as well as the larger American culture. Stevenson explores how the techniques used by enslavers to exert power over Black enslaved laborers created the blueprint for a future criminal justice system reliant on control, surveillance, and punishment. In 1664, the General Assembly of Maryland determined that all Black people, regardless of status, were now enslaved and would be for the rest of their lives. The status of “prisoner” was thrust on every Black person.

Stevenson shows, therefore, that unique to American slavery was the notion that a person could not escape slavery. Traditional systems of slavery imposed an expiration date, often associated with a crime. Those convicted of wrongdoings were forced into slavery for a specific number of years. But the American slavery system, based upon an ideology of racial disparity, asserted that slavery was the birthright of any Black person. To support the claim that the modern carceral system is rooted in slavery, Steven therefore presents evidence that the same logic of racial disparity that was used to justify the system of American slavery is also at work in the modern carceral system. Stevenson notes, for instance, that the notion that Black men are dangerous became the catalyst for the war on drugs and high rates of incarcerated Black men. Hence, here as in the system of American slavery there is a white supremacist notion of racial disparity at play.

Jasmine Mans’s poem “Greenwood” furthers this idea by exploring why the United States is so loathe to pay attention to the violent actions of white people while perpetuating a mythology of violent Black men: “Unable to keep count of its murders / because it, then, would have to keep / count of its murderers” (291). By coupling this poem with Stevenson’s essay, the book uses both logos and pathos to convey the deep roots of white supremacy and anti-Black racism in American society.

Just as Stevenson draws a connection between slavery and modern imprisonment, Villarosa asserts that the poor treatment of Black patients by white physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic is one more throughline of slavery’s pervasive impact. Villarosa draws from the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis to demonstrate that the racial disparities that proliferated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have deep roots in American history. By presenting these examples, the authors collectively lend support to the claim about the perpetuation of slavery—merely in a different form—into the modern day; they do so by offering a detailed analysis showing that slavery expands beyond the formal institutions of slavery that were abolished in the 19th century.

Despite these relentless attacks on the safety and livelihood of Black citizens, the book notes that Black Resistance as a Persistent Force Against Racial Injustice continued to emerge. Rita Dove’s poem juxtaposes the stark violence of the bombing with the innocence of the children who died. In the poem, the speaker is excited about the white dresses the girls will wear, which she believes makes them look like angels; in this way, the literary elements of the poem underscore the gravity of the violence done to these girls and the impact of Black resistance.

In addition to poetry, the book also engages with this topic by continuing to recount the often-unacknowledged role of Black resistance in American history. The Alabama bombing and the murder of Emmett Till, along with countless other acts of white violence against Black citizens, emboldened Black activists. In Chapter 13, Anthea Butler shows how churches served as spaces for resistance and advocacy. When Rosa Parks was arrested, local ministers and Black community leaders met at a church to discuss their plans. Martin Luther King Jr, a systematic theologian, became the face of the American Civil Rights Movement. Hence, the book ties its claims about Black Resistance to the central role that the church has had historically in the Black community.

Finally, Chapter 14 notes the role of music as a form of resistance and as part of The Role of Black Americans in Shaping National Identity. Motown Records helped established an important idea: that Black culture is American culture. The coopting of the music developed during the Harlem Renaissance by white musicians and singers is an indicator of the impact of Black people on American culture. Morris argues that the creativity of Black writers, musicians, and intellectuals created a trajectory for American art and music, one which champions the voices of the oppressed. This chapter thus provides nuance to the book’s claims by showing that The Role of Black Americans in Shaping National Identity extends to important aspects of society and culture beyond politics.