A review by lulo49
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

5.0

I listened to this on audible as I wanted to hear the voices of the people who wrote and read parts of this excellent work. The book traces the history of racisim in the US back to the first slave ship in 1619 up to today. To produce this work the author and collaborators researched historical records, laws and acts, speeches, newspaper articles, population records, physical evidence, and more. This is a comprehensive documetation of how, at every juncture when it might have been possible to bring equal treatment to black people, to provide reparations that might bring the same opporunity to black people that white people have always had, the ruling class (politicians, administrators, educators, religious figures, bankers, the legal system, other institutions) chose to ignore the needs and lives of black people. Having read other books by black authors and historians focused on telling the full history of the US, much of the areas covered in the book were not new to me. What was new was the sad detail of how extensive the oppression has been, and how deeply it's been embedded in out society from the beginning. I highly recommend this book to every citizen of the US, especially white citizens who want to understand our full history -- it's not easy to hear and we won't like it, but we should know it and hold it at the forefront of our mind as we resolve to bring equality to our deliberately unequal society.