The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Listen to the interview with Drs. Becky Bruce and Sunu Kodumthara:
About this interview
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story is an anthology of essays, literary works and photographs focusing on the role slavery has played in shaping modern American life. It is a book-length expansion of the original 1619 Project issue of the New York Times, which was first published in August of 2019 to commemorate the 400th year anniversary of the first enslaved Africans brought to the new colony of Virginia. The book makes the argument, through a chorus of voices, that in order to understand our shared history, our virtues and our vices, slavery and the contributions of Black Americans needs to be at the center of our history, not at its margins.
In this podcast, SWOSU historians Dr. Becky Bruce and Dr. Sunu Kodumthara discuss The 1619 Project with librarian Frederic Murray. Dr. Bruce is chair of the Social Sciences Department and teaches courses in modern American history, including American Diplomatic History, U.S. History Since 1877, and History of the Vietnam War. Dr. Kodumthara is a full professor of American history whose scholarship focuses on women’s suffrage, activism, and protest.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead editor and creator of The 1619 Project is the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism and a tenured faculty member at Howard University. In 2017, while working as an investigative journalist, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work on educational inequality. In 2020, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for The 1619 Project.
- New York Times Company. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., First ed., One World, 2021.
Learn more
- The 1619 Project
- The 1619 Project: Pulitzer Center Education Programming
- Not Even Past: Social Vulnerability and the Legacy of Redlining
- University of Richmond Race & Racism Project
- Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom: Primary Sources from Harvard’s Houghton Library
- SlaveVoyages
The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history.
Credits
- Topic: The 1619 Project (ISBN: 9780593230572)
- Author(s)/Performer(s): Nikole Hannah-Jones
- Interviewee: Drs. Becky Bruce and Sunu Kodumthara
- Interviewer: Frederic Murray
- Recording Engineer: Doug Reichmann
- Length: 00:49:10 (hh:mm:ss)
- Recorded: January 14, 2022