The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Black Wall Street refers to a prosperous African American district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the early 20th century. The area was home to numerous banks, shops, and theaters that were successful businesses owned by Black people in the community. In 1921, white mobs attacked the district, looting and burning businesses. The area was never able to fully recover.

These meetings, held between 1830 and 1890, brought together Black and white activists on issues such as abolition, voting rights, and racial and legal segregation. These conventions served as a space where new ideologies were formed and helped activists to organize effective campaigns.

Diaspora, a term used to describe the dispersion of people from their original homeland to other places, is a term often used to describe the widespread influence of Black people on communities across the globe. Displaced by the transatlantic slave trade, Black people have had a profound impact on many cultures, including the United States.

This 1857 Supreme Court case was brought forward by Dred Scott, a Black man who lived in free territories with his enslaver. Scott argued that his residence in these territories should grant him freedom. The court ruled in a 7-2 decision that Scott did not have a right to bring his case before the court, because he was not a citizen.

The Emancipation Proclamation, delivered by Abraham Lincoln for the first time on January 1, 1863, was a declaration of the end of slavery. Although this announcement marked the formal end to slavery, it only applied to formerly Confederate states. Therefore, many Black people were still enslaved in states that had remained a part of the Union during the Civil War. Many people celebrate June 19th, known as Juneteenth, as a national day of independence commemorating the end of slavery. On this day, the federal government deployed military units to Texas to ratify the Emancipation Proclamation and to ensure the freedom of the 250,000 people still enslaved in the state.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868. This amendment, adopted after the Civil War, ensured rights to natural-born citizens, including formerly enslaved Black people.

In 1850, the United States Congress signed the Fugitive Slave Act in order to quell tension between the North and South. This act required Northern law enforcement to return fugitives from slavery to the South and penalized anyone who helped enslaved people escape. This act was used to justify the kidnapping and dispossession of Black people in free states.

Lasting from 1781 to 1804, the Haitian Revolution was an anti-slavery uprising against French colonial rule. Inspired by the French Revolution, Black activists sought to overthrow French forces in what is now modern-day Haiti but was known in the 18th century as Saint-Domingue. This successful revolution worried white enslavers in the US, who feared uprisings amongst Southern enslaved laborers.

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual, cultural, and artistic movement that emerged in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s and 1930s. Artists like Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston lived in Harlem during this time and participated in this period of artistic revival and creativity.

The Jim Crow laws, named after a racist minstrel character, enforced racial segregation and discrimination in the American South. Southern states’ policies following the Civil War legally enforced separate facilities, schools, churches, and transportation for Black and white people.

The Middle Passage represents the transatlantic slave trade during which millions of Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transferred to the Americas to be sold into slavery. The Middle Passage represents the journey across the Atlantic Ocean, which often lasted months and forced enslaved people to live in extreme conditions, causing many to die during the journey.

John Caldwell Calhoun developed the theory of nullification, which suggests that states have the right to invalidate—or nullify—federal laws. Although Calhoun was never able to validate his concept of nullification legally, the ideology emboldened Southern states to secede from the Union, leading to the Civil War.

This 1896 Supreme Court case upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal.” When Homer Plessy sued a railroad company for forcing him to leave a whites-only railroad car, he challenged the state’s segregation laws. The court ruled against Plessy in a 7-1 decision, determining that separate facilities was a policy in accordance with equality that did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Reconstruction represents a period after the Civil War during which the South was charged with rebuilding and integrating formerly enslaved Black Americans into social institutions. Lasting from 1865 through 1877, Reconstruction was marked by the efforts of Black Americans to secure civil rights, including the right to vote. However, opposition by white mobs and advocacy groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, following Reconstruction negated many of the efforts made by Black Americans and led to a period of extreme oppression.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1791, ensures the right of a regulated militia and the right to bear arms. In Chapter 9, Carol Anderson argues that the Second Amendment was designed to support white enslavers who feared uprisings by enslaved people.

The slave codes of the colonial area were reactive policies designed to regulate and secure the institution of slavery. While each colony had different codes, they collectively centered on restricting the freedoms and rights of Black people. Codes covered a variety of limitations, including making it illegal for white and Black individuals to marry one another and determining that any child born to an enslaved woman would inherit the mother’s condition of enslavement.

The Tea Party is a conservative political movement that began in 2009 in an effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act, a federal health insurance program signed into law by President Barack Obama. In Chapter 7, Bouie asserts that the policies sought by the Tea Party in response to the Affordable Care Act were representative of a resentment toward marginalized groups.

During the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the Three-Fifths Compromise was made to determine how enslaved laborers would be counted for taxation and representation in Congress. White Southern enslavers worried that low population numbers of white people in the South would threaten their representative power in Congress and by extension the institution of slavery itself. The Three-Fifths Compromise stated that each enslaved person counted as three-fifths of a citizen.

The Treat of Hopewell, signed on the Hopewell Plantation, established boundaries for the Cherokee Nation. In return, the Cherokee people agreed to return Black people living on their land to white enslavers.

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of routes to help enslaved Black people from the South to free states in the North. After the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Underground Railroad became a highly important and dangerous operation by means of which thousands of enslaved people secured their freedom.