Debate Over US History Class Began Long Before 1619 Project

With the nation divided along political lines, amid ever-mounting suspicion of supposed outside influences undermining American security, a group of powerful people decided to go right to the root of what they saw as the problem: American students, they believed, were being taught a skewed version of their own history that was designed to weaken patriotism. To stop the corrosion, someone would have to intervene.

This scenario may sound familiar, but it didn’t take place just last week, when President Trump threatened the funding of California schools that teach the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which reframes the country’s origins around the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia.

But in fact, that scenario could have taken place in the aftermath of the Civil War. Or in 1917. Or in 1948.

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