1619 bis

For John, BLUF:  The Old Gray Lady story, "1619," isn't quite the on target story we have been led to believe.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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What ‘The Times’ Got Wrong About Slavery in America

From Minding the Campus, by Dr George Avery, October 2, 2019.

Here is the lede plus two:

The New York Times recently drew a lot of attention for its “1619 Project” initiative, which has been criticized for misrepresenting the role of the slave trade as the central core to the development of the United States.  The Times “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

The project name purportedly refers to the date the first African slaves were brought to the English colonies that later became the United States.  Like much else in the Times’ version of the role of slavery in American history, even the project name is rooted in distortion.  Although the institution of slavery is a stain on national history, the true story is much more complex than the Times represents, and the United States plays a role both as a country that exploited the slave trade as well as a leader in the movement to end the African slave trade, and was not the primary instigator or beneficiary of the brutal trade.

1619 was not, in fact, the date of the first African slaves in the English colonies — those Africans were brought in under indenturement contracts, not bought as slaves.  They were contracted to a fixed period of labor (typically five years) to pay for the cost charged by the Dutch slavers, at which point they were freed with a payment of a start-up endowment.

Read it all.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff