In August 2019, The New York Times published an extraordinary collection of essays, poems, stories and photos entitled “The 1619 Project.” With it, it proposed a “new origin story” for the U.S., beginning in 1619 with the arrival in Virginia of the first ship carrying slaves, rather than in 1776 with the beginning of the American Revolution. It argues that the history we have accepted and taught fails to acknowledge the centrality of White supremacy and systemic racism not only to slavery but to the Revolution, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow eras, and to who we are today as a people. This course, led by Paul Kelleher, will take an in-depth look at the 1619 Project’s arguments as well as discuss the controversies that its publication spawned.