The New York Times is one of the most prestigious newsletters, websites, and information sources. Starting in August of 2019, the NYT has decided to start a long-form journalism project to circle America’s major events around the history of African Americans and their accommodations to the country. This project is called the 1619 project and the developer, Nikole Hannah-Jones, managed to connect every major event in American black history to the country’s development.
Hannah-Jones’s writes a lengthy entry on the most important events that shaped America today including the American Revolution, Civil War, slavery, and the World Wars. One occurrence that I found especially strange was the treatment of black soldiers after the wars. Black soldiers fought overseas for the country that didn’t even respect them, and came back home to worse conditions. Hannah-Jones infers that caucasians knew that when blacks went out to fight, they would want their full rights, the respect they were due, and to be treated as actual human beings. Therefore, they wanted to make them feel smaller when they were back home to show them that risking their lives for this country meant nothing. Black veterans were abused, spit on, talked down on, and killed for the smallest things. Isaac Woodard was an officer Jones mentioned for example. Woodard was a black soldier who was beaten to the point where he could no longer see because he got into an argument with a Greyhound driver over using the bathroom. He was an honorably discharged soldier who was returning home and came back blind not because of the battle field, but on his way back home in his own country. A small argument about wanting to use the bathroom left him without sight at the age of 26. By sharing Woodard’s story in the 1619 project, Hannah-Jones argued that no matter what black people do in or for this country, white residents would find a way to demean them and ignore their attributions.
A powerful post—I’m glad this reading stuck with you, although sorry to know that the details of the atrocities committed against Black veterans after WWII stuck with you the most. Clearly, the events Hannah-Jones describes were an outrage against humanity and a betrayal of American ideals—but, are there any more hopeful lessons to take away here? How does she suggest that African Americans “have been the perfecters of this democracy”?
You might consider, for example (although we haven’t gotten there yet in the semester), whether it is a coincidence that the movement known as the Civil Rights Movement/Black Freedom Struggle took off in the years immediately after WWII. Perhaps there was something about their wartime experience that made many Black people want to fight that much harder against the injustices they faced upon returning home?