Who Gets to Say “We?”
A New Series Begins (Pt. 0 of 6)
Image: Bruce Davidson, Untitled (African American man with ‘Vote’ written on forehead) from the Time of Change series, 1965, gelatin silver print on paper, 14 × 11 inches. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2018.58.211. Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos.
What does it mean to tell the story of a nation—not from its monuments, but from its silences?
This Thursday, I’ll begin publishing a six-part series on the 1619 Project and the backlash it provoked. But this is not just about The New York Times, or the classroom, or even history itself. It’s about the long struggle over authorship, legitimacy, and who gets to define the moral boundaries of American identity.
Today’s post is a preface—a kind of architectural drawing before the structure goes up. A way to frame what’s coming.
Image: "The 1619 Project. "A 6-Part Limited Documentary-Series." Courtesy:: HULU
Preface: Pt. 0
When The 1619 Project was published, it did more than retell the story of America. It unsettled the architecture of who gets to tell it.
The backlash was immediate. Not just from politicians or pundits, but from scholars, legislators, and gatekeepers of public memory—those who had long held the keys to historical legitimacy. But the questions it raised were older than the controversy: Who owns the past? Who is permitted to define a nation’s origin? And who, finally, gets to say we?
This series is not an endorsement or a defense. It is an excavation—of the arguments beneath the arguments. Of the backlash, its meaning, and its historical lineage. What follows is not just about 1619. It’s about the centuries of silence that made such a reckoning feel like rupture.
This is not just about history. It is about power. And the long struggle to narrate a nation.
Coming Thursday: Pt. 1: The Right to Begin Again
Image: The White Lion (at Jamestown by Howard Pyle (1853-1911), "Landing Negroes at Jamestown from Dutch Man-of-War, 1619," 1901. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005696251/.
Who gets to define the national story? And why do some truths remain “controversial” only when Black voices tell them?
Image: Slaves Waiting for Sale - Richmond, Virginia (1861) oil painting by Eyre Crowe, based on a sketch made 1853 while visiting the United States in the company of William Thackeray; Crowe also sketched and later painted an outdoor slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina. https://web.archive.org/web/20090818175555/http://www.geocities.com/eyre_crowe/art_slavery.html
Every Thursday for the next five weeks, I’ll publish a new installment exploring how the backlash to The 1619 Project exposed long-standing fault lines—across education, public memory, professional history, and generational resistance.
This is not just a reaction to one project. It’s a map of the fight over American history—and the future of who gets to claim it.
Subscribe now if you haven’t already. The series begins Thursday.