The History Room
I started listening to but stopped after a few minutes.
The professor introducing it makes this assertion: "By most accounts, America was founded in 1776 when the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence. More recently, The New York Times Magazine launched an initiative known as the 1619 Project, aiming to redefine America’s birth as being 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on American shores."
The 1619 argument centers on ambiguity. These are America and founding. We in the US often speak of the US as America. If we mean the country, the US, then it was indeed founded, that is established in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. If we mean the nation, the people, then it's much broader and founding would mean more like discovery.
The 1619 argument about found, that is, discovery, also immediately strikes me as false in that its founding event, the White Lion English privateer under a Dutch letter of marque bringing the first Africans to colonial Virginia in 1619 (source), completely overlooks the prior founding of the Virgina colony, chartered 1606, settled 1607, Sir Humphrey Gilbert Newfoundland attempt in 1583, and Sir Walter Raleigh Roanoke Island attempt in the late 1580s (source). 1619 is not the beginning of America.
Furthermore, 1619: 400 years ago, a ship arrived in Virginia, bearing human cargo question the exact status of the blacks who arrived there. Some intergrated into the community and others may have been treated as indentured servants like other whites.
Moreover, if we consider America in general, as Native Americans And Slavery explains, slavery of captives, who weren't executed, was common among native American Indians.
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Originally Posted by MMC
