In August 2019, the New York Times debuted the 1619 Project, the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Times staff writer.  The premise was that 1619 marked the year in which the first African slaves came to America, permanently corrupting America's founding. The 1619 Project was condemned for serious historical inaccuracies.*  In her inaugural article — "Our democracy's founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true" — Hannah-Jones gave readers a foretaste of the errors that would follow in subsequent articles.  Nevertheless, the Pulitzer committee awarded her its commentary award. Most strikingly, Hannah-Jones originally wrote that Americans fought their revolution to preserve slavery, making the whole idea of American liberty a cynical cover for immoral greed: One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence...(Read Full Post)