1619 Project Author Nikole Hannah-Jones Now Says She Never Implied That Year Was America's True Founding

The 1619 Project is The New York Times' Pulitzer-winning effort to put racism and slavery at the center of the conversation about American history. The newspaper published a series of articles in August 2019—the 400th anniversary of slavery's introduction to the English colonies in the Americas—that reframed the year 1619 rather than 1776 as the true founding of America.

It's a provocative claim, and it came under serious criticism, along with other aspects of the project. But the project's lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is now asserting that she never made it and that anyone who believes otherwise was fooled by bad-faith right-wing critics.

"One thing in which the right has been tremendously successful is getting media to frame stories in their language and through their lens," wrote Hannah-Jones in a subsequently deleted tweet. "The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 is our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776." She made a similar statement on CNN as well.