The 1619 Project (in the New York Times Magazine)

[David Lockmiller]

Leslie Stahl's "60 Minutes" broadcast story on the "Lincoln" movie began with these words: “The film is filled with things about our 16th President that we, who are not Lincoln scholars, did not know.”

Well, it turns out, now, that supposedly all of those same Lincoln and American History scholars did not know the truth themselves about President Abraham Lincoln, or even the real reason that the American Revolutionary War was begun. These are historical revelations according to the 1619 Project authors and the current management of the New York Times that published the work.

Here's a story that seems to be right in the "60 Minutes" program's "wheel-house," using old baseball terminology: You have more than 10 of America's preeminent American History and Lincoln scholars, including one three-time winner of the prestigious annual Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his scholarly works on Lincoln, contending that there are severe historical accuracy problems with the 1619 Project, most notably, the basis for the American Civil War and specious allegations and innuendo regarding the character and reputation of President Abraham Lincoln.

On the other side of the equation is Nikole Hannah-Jones, the principal project author and the 2020 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary presented on the basis of her 1619 Project essay published in the New York Times Magazine. Her educational background: A bachelor's degree in History and African-American Studies from the University of Notre Dame in 1998. She also graduated from the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media with a master's degree in 2003, where she was a Roy H. Park Fellow.

The American History and Lincoln scholars submitted their specific historical accuracy complaints to the New York Times Magazine Editor publishing the 1619 Project work. With minor exception, the complaints were rejected by the Times Magazine editor as insignificant interpretive variations of historical facts made by this nation's top American History and Lincoln scholars.

Then, a respected long-time columnist for the Washington Post, George Will, steps in to present his assessment of the controversy. See "The ‘1619 Project’ is filled with slovenliness and ideological ax-grinding" by George Will (May 6, 2020). His concluding paragraph opinion reads:

The ferocity of arguments among professors often is inversely proportional to the arguments’ stakes. Not, however, those about “The 1619 Project,” because, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Has this, the slogan of the party governing Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984,” supplanted “All the news that’s fit to print” as the Times’s credo?

Does anyone know why CBS "60 Minutes" has not done an entire hour-long show on the 1619 Project controversy with the preeminent Lincoln and American History scholars, the principal 1619 Project essayist and New York Times Magazine editor, and Washington Post columnist George Will?

I believe that I have the correct answer to this last question and it involves big, big, big money (as a hint).