New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’ Named to ‘Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade’

The “1619 Project” of the New York Times, which falsely claimed that the American Revolution was fought partly to preserve slavery, has been named to the “Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade” by New York University’s journalism school.

The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute announced Wednesday that the “1619 Project” had made the decade’s top ten for “placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

As 1619 Project is named a Top Work of Journalism of the Decade, @nhannahjones accepts "on behalf of the 40 million descendants of American slavery," and says project "aimed to take a story that has been treated as an asterisk in the American story and force it into the center."

— NYU Journalism (@nyu_journalism) October 14, 2020

The project’s lead essay, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, won the Pulitzer Prize even though its claim about the Revolution and slavery was regarded even by left-wing scholars as false, forcing the Times to make corrections and add an editor’s note.

Hannah-Jones later tried to claim the purpose of the “1619 Project” was not, in fact, to claim that America’s true founding was the arrival of slavery. Ironically, that appears to be what earned her a place on New York University’s top ten list.

Earlier this month, 21 members of the National Association of Scholars signed a letter calling for the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind its award to Hannah-Jones, because “it turns out the article itself was false when written,” and due to “surreptitious efforts by The New York Times to alter the record of what it had published.”

They added that the changes were not to Hannah-Jones’s essay, but to “the crucially important introductory materials whose claims—for example, the ‘reframing’ of American history with the year 1619 as the nation’s ‘true founding’ —form the underlying rationale of the entire Project.”

Other works of journalism on the top ten list include two stories related to President Donald Trump — though none about “Russia collusion” — and the #1 work of the decade was “The Case for Reparations,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic.

Some have called the riots of the past several months — which were often aimed at symbols of the country’s history and values — the “1619 Riots,” a name that Hannah-Jones proudly embraced, saying that she would consider it an honor.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.