Thread by @trymainelee

I can’t think of a more necessary project in this moment than the NYT Magazine’s #1619Project. It argues, in so many thoughtful ways, that there would be no American democracy without the struggles of black folks to fully clarify what democracy actually is.

As the brilliant heart and soul behind this project, Nikole Hannah Jones @nhannahjones puts it, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” nytimes.com/interactive/20…

The project’s essayists, poets & artists unpack how our presence here from the beginning would shape nearly every aspect of American social, political and economic life. It untangles that legacy, looking into the past and into our present, reframing the American story.

400 years after the beginning of American slavery in 1619, the project figures that year as the country's true founding, not 1776, "placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."

I had the privilege of writing a piece for the #1619Project on the roots of the racial wealth gap, perhaps the most glaring legacy of slavery and the violent economic dispossession that followed. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

How did America's racial wealth gap grow so wide? Through murder and plunder. People like Elmore Bolling were lynched because they were "too successful to be a Negro." The stripping of black wealth was not just a product of spontaneous violence, but etched in law & public policy.

So many amazing pieces from so many amazing people. Among them @nhannahjones @just_shelter @ClintSmithIII @jbouie
@Wesley_Morris @eveewing @KhalilGMuhammad @TiyaMilesTAM @lindavillarosa @JInterlandi @jesmimi @Wadza_M @KevinMKruse

And as @nhannahjones said, “Black writers, black poets, black photographers, original works from black artists. We are the descendants here to set the record straight.”