|
A quick request: We’re working on a big project about the 2020 census, and we’re collecting your questions. If you’ve got one, please submit it below.
|
|
Year of return
August 2019 marks what historians believe is the 400th anniversary of African slaves landing in the British colonies that later became the United States. In this week’s collaborative episode with PRI’s The World and The New York Times, we’re investigating America’s long legacy of slavery – how it endured and shape shifted and how African Americans ultimately worked toward fulfilling several of the promises on which the Founding Fathers failed to deliver. Specifically, the episode spotlights The New York Times Magazine’s recent 1619 Project, which aims to understand 1619 as the true date of America’s founding and place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”
First up is a trip to Ghana with The World’s Rupa Shenoy. The country declared 2019 as the “Year of Return” for African descendants across the globe. Yet as these travelers converge, worldviews have collided. Some descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. came to Ghana looking for the homeland from which their ancestors were stolen. But for some who call Ghana home today, the return is an unwelcome reminder that hundreds of years ago, some Africans were complicit in abetting European colonizers in instituting the slave trade.
“The system already existed,” Ghanaian historian Nat Amarteifio told Shenoy. “The Europeans saw it and thought, ‘Ah! We can try these people in our lands in the New World.’ ”
Next is an in-depth conversation between host Al Letson and Nikole Hannah-Jones, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, who led development of the 1619 Project. In her essay that introduces the project, Hannah-Jones writes: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.”
“Our Founding Fathers did not actually believe in the ideals that they wrote down,” she told Letson. “But we did.”
|
|
|
Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
|
|
|
Documents show: Forwarding this email to a friend will help you make time for a little joyride.
|
|
|
|
