One reason I became a historian is that I was the impressionable age of eight during the bicentennial and received this book from my grandparents. It was the 1619 Project of its day. Thank god that 1976 book is no longer how we teach kids about the past. archive.org/details/200yea…
What most drew me in were the pictures, which are really engaging and can be read in a host of different ways. 
But take a second to read the first page. Note how the story opens, whose shoes the reader is asked to put themselves in, and what lessons we're encouraged to draw about the Civil War.
Check out the framing of this picture essay. The images are gorgeous. The framing is....uh....incredibly problematic to put it mildly. The age of violent Indian dispossession and Jim Crow was "the age of innocence."
It's important to note that the framing does not deny the existence of other historical realities and experiences that give the lie to the narrative of innocence. But they treat these other experiences as existing "beneath" the main story, the main story being "innocence."
The problem is not that this 1976 book is "false." Those are real, historical images, and as far as I know, the specific historical facts mentioned in the book are, indeed, factual.
The problem is *which Americans* are centered in the book, with which Americans is the reader being asked to identify? This 1976 book was aimed squarely at me, a white middle class reader.
That 1976 book didn't seek to hide the history of non-white people or poor people, but it included such history as supplementary to the "real" story, which was the story of wealthy and powerful white people, the people whose actions and outlooks presumably *most* mattered.
Here's another book published in 1976 that reflected the *future* of historical scholarship, it reflected an emerging approach to history that sought to treat all historical actors (and not just the powerful) with respect.
Here's the key point. That Al Young collection from 1976 was really important and insightful, but it looks dated in 2019. The Bicentennial picture book also looks dated in 2019. ALL HISTORY EVER WRITTEN WILL AT SOME POINT LOOK DATED.
History is an argument. History is a story. History is based on archival data and should always strive to be true to the historical record, but it will always be contested and it will always be stamped by the time in which it's written. That's not a flaw, it's just unavoidable.
Of course some historians take issue with some of the interpretations offered in the 1619 Project. It would be weird if every historian just agreed 100% with it. But to act like 5 prominent historians disagreeing with it somehow nullifies the entire enterprise is silly.
In 1976 there were plenty of prominent historians who dismissed Al Young's collection of essays. They thought it was "biased" and partial, and they would have found that Bicentennial picture book far more congenial with their own general take on American history.
In 2019 most professional historians who have devoted their lives to studying the past would say that Al Young's 1976 collection offered a far more comprehensive and archivally-grounded take on American history than the Bicentennial book.
Interpretations of the past change as the people writing that history change. Al Young's reflection on that process, as a working class Jewish leftist entering an overwhelmingly WASP-y world of early American history, is worth reading.
google.com/books/edition/…
google.com/books/edition/…
New interpretations of historical events ALWAYS rub established authorities the wrong way. That friction is a positive thing, it's a sign of the vibrancy of the field.
The ruffled feathers of older historians aren't a sign that some unforgivable sin against timeless truth has been committed. It's the way it's always been and will always be. Two of those signatories were professors of mine and I learned a ton from them.
That said, had they asked me to sign that letter about the 1619 Project (which they did not), I would have not done so. Not because I agree with every single sentence in the 1619 Project, but because I think it offers an informed take on the US past that is worth engaging with.
One last point. I know about that Al Young book from 1976 because the two professors with whom I studied, and who signed that NYTimes letter critical of the 1619 Project, assigned it to me.
