I am a political science-economics student at UNH. This past semester the students in our political science class had to do a White Paper about globalization. There were strict requirements to getting a passing grade. There had to be footnotes, a detailed bibliography, and sources used like think tanks and Peer review groups. If this academic rigor was not employed, students would not get a passing grade.
Nikole Hannah-Jones used none of these resources in her 1619 Project essays. She would have received an “F” for her essays.
If faculties try to bring the 1619 project into our schools without teaching the 1776 Project alongside it, our teachers will be inflicting academic harm on our children and intellectual dishonesty on their part in this process.
I will explain these falsehoods one at a time.
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Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY) once said “we are entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts”. Ms. Hannah-Jones is not entitled to dump her facts on our children.
First, Black Americans “for the most part” fought alone against racial injustice. This falsehood completely ignores the Abolitionist Movement that started in 1830 in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. These states were the cradle of this movement with white men like John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and our own NH Senator John Hale at the forefront of this movement. Not a word from Ms. Jones about this movement. Her claim that Blacks having to go it alone is a falsehood, not a fact.
Parents, ask your children, on their field trip to our State House, did their teachers read to them the inscription at the base of John Hale’s statue? It reads:
“The measure of my ambition will be full, if when my wife shall repair to my grave to drop the tear of affection to my memory. They may read on my tombstone, he who lies beneath surrendered office, place and power rather than bow down and worship slavery.” Blacks were clearly not alone in their fight for racial justice.
Next, Hannah-Jones was audaciously brazen to use the race card, calling out President Abraham Lincoln as a racist. Lincoln was, arguably, the best president America ever had. Lincoln used his superior leadership skills to navigate the ship of State through the waters with cross currents of saving the Union and ending slavery. Lincoln did both.
Hannah-Jones used one meeting Lincoln had at the White House with 5 free African-Americans leaders. He asked for advice from these leaders if it would be advisable to end slavery and send the freed slaves to a country in Africa for their own well-being. Prior to this meeting, Lincoln had already written the Emancipation Declaration. So, ending slavery was not an issue in his mind. History records there were mixed on the question of repatriation (A Tom Mackaman Interview with Historian James Oakes on the World Socialist Web site).
New Hampshire’s own summer resident at The Fells in Newbury, John Hay, was secretary to Lincoln and Hay was present at that meeting. Hay was so taken back by that conversation, Hay called the idea “hideous & barbarous humbug,” quoted by history scholar DR. Sean Wilentz in his Atlantic Magazine “A Matter of Fact” article.
Lincoln was a good listener. He “sloughed off” that idea and he never brought it up again.
Here is another example of how an older white man, a resident of NH., made sure that the Blacks did not go it alone. Our teachers need to teach the significance of men like Hay, Hale, Quincy Adams and John Adams in letting the world know that the white supremacy label did not play well in New England.
The other argument Hanna-Jones used in her thesis is that Abraham Lincoln was a racist because of the words used in a eulogy Lincoln gave of Senator Henry Clay in 1852. Lincoln was describing the thoughts of Clay that slaves were a “troublesome presence” not himself.
According to Dr. Sean Wilentz in his article “A Matter of Facts” he asserted that Lincoln did not believe that the United States was “a democracy intended only for white people” If Hannah-jones is going to call President Lincoln a racist because of that eulogy, she needs to call out President Biden as a racist also because of Biden’s eulogy of Senator Robert Byrd, who was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
In a speech in Peoria, ILL. in 1854, Lincoln said that:
“out of the abundance of man’s heart, that slavery extension is wrong: and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.”
Can we actually think that Lincoln, who gave that speech, drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, led the nation to ratify the Thirteen Amendment, and ultimately gave his life to achieve the goals of his Presidency of saving our union and abolishing slavery is a racist?
The 1619 Project curriculum is being distributed with the help of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teacher’s union. The Union announced that it recently worked with The New York Times to distribute copies of the 1619 Project to educators and activists around the country in the NEA’s “Edjustice “program (neaedjustice.org/the-1619-project).
As Dr. Allen Guelzo, a senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities at the James Madison Program’s Initiative in Politics at Princeton University, said in his article “Preaching a Conspiracy Theory” in the City Journal December 8, 2019 issue,” the 1619 project is not history, it is ignorance”.
Parents, grandparents, and taxpayers, unless you want this 1619 Project curriculum to teach our students that President Lincoln was a racist, you should make sure the 1619 Project is not taught in your schools. There are better more factual ways to teach the evils of slavery in American history than this biased and misleading information in the 1619 Project.
Joseph Mendola
FMR. Kearsarge Regional School Board member
Warner, NH.
[Image: FrontPageMag]
