From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. Our nation was born in genocide, when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Still, King feels compelled to point out the “broader dimensions of the evil” of US history, of its “myth” of equality: If ever there was a moment to put forward an optimistic view of US history-of a country about to fulfill its “promissory note” of equality-this was it. Liberalism was seemingly triumphant, on the cusp of passing historic civil rights legislation. in 1963 writing near the top of the mountain. The editors and authors of 1619 are working in the cockpit of Trumpism, with racism and inequality renascent, so their dark take on US history is understandable. Praise came fast, and then the backlash, especially against the claim that the nation’s true founding should be dated not to the 1776 American Revolution but to 1619, when the first group of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans arrived in North America and were sold to Jamestown settlers.
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