When "The 1619 Project" was released three-and-a-half years ago, the ambitious reexamination of American history sparked difficult conversations about the legacy of slavery in the United States and earned praise for its creator, New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones.
It also provoked a fierce, if predictable, backlash from critics, many of whom were threatened by its central thesis: that the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia 400 years ago was a defining moment — perhaps the defining moment — in the history of the United States, one that continues to have a real and frequently devastating effect on Black Americans today.
"The 1619 Project," which was first published as a collection of essays in the New York Times Magazine, then adapted into a podcast and a book, also attracted attention from Hollywood producers interested in making it into a documentary.
