Title: Lawmakers Push to Ban '1619 Project' From Schools
Headings: Lawmakers Push to Ban ‘1619 Project’ From Schools
Lawmakers Push to Ban ‘1619 Project’ From Schools
Social studies groups push back
History education should invite debate, not stifle it
Calls on lawmakers to focus on the pandemic
Sarah Schwartz

Content: Social studies groups push back
The 1619 Project, a series of essays conceived by Hannah-Jones and published by the Times Magazine, commemorates the 400th anniversary of the date the first enslaved Africans were brought to the American colonies. Its stated aim is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” The curriculum is a separate entity, a series of reading guides and activities created by the Pulitzer Center and released concurrently with the Times Magazine issue, designed to support educators who want to teach the project. In September of 2019, Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson announced that copies of the project would be distributed to every high school in the district. On Twitter , Hannah-Jones spoke out against the bill in Iowa, where she grew up. “ Iowa public schools are what gave me my start in journalism in high school, where I took the Black studies course that taught me the year 1619,” she wrote. “That a bill now exists seeking to censor my 1619 work from other Iowa public school students is shocking & sad … Attempting to control what teachers can teach in the name of patriotism is seeking indoctrination not education. Education should open our minds, not close them. The children of my home state deserve better than that.” Arkansas state Representative Mark Lowery, Iowa state Representative Skyler Wheeler, and Mississippi Senator Angela Burks Hill, who introduced the bills seeking to ban teaching the curriculum, did not respond to requests for comment.