How Far 1619 Has Reached
Editor's Note
In the hands of the Destructive Left, The 1619 Project became a tool to sever Americans from their past and redefine the nation through the lens of grievance and oppression. That this narrative has taken root in so many classrooms — often without scrutiny — is no accident. It’s emblematic of a broader effort to capture the moral imagination of the next generation. This report from researcher Jonah Davids offers a sober accounting of how far that effort has advanced, and what it might take to reclaim civic education from those who seek to undo it.
Few works of journalism have traveled further beyond the printed page than The 1619 Project. In the half-decade since its publication, it has been embraced as a moral corrective and condemned as ideological propaganda — adopted by school districts, banned by legislatures, and invoked in nearly every argument about how American history should be taught.
The Project — a series of essays, poems, and stories later expanded to include three books, a podcast, and a Hulu docuseries — drew sustained criticism from historians for its tendentiousness and factual inaccuracies. Most notably, The Project falsely claimed that a primary reason the colonists declared their independence from Britain was to protect the institution of slavery. It also portrayed anti-black racism as endemic to America, with Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones writing, “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”
The Project quickly found its way into America’s K-12 classrooms thanks to a collaboration with The Pulitzer Center, which released a 1619 Project Curriculum consisting of “reading guides, activities, and other resources to bring The 1619 Project into [the] classroom.” For example, one unit titled “American Hypocrisy” has students read and evaluate articles such as “The Idea of America,” “The Wealth Gap,” and “Mass Incarceration.”
As of September 2024, the Pulitzer Center’s 1619 materials had been accessed over a million times, and the Center had built a network of 541 educator partners reaching over 25,000 K-12 students, including 120 partnerships with schools and districts in 30 states.
Yet as Peter Wood notes, these figures likely understate The Project’s actual reach, as the Pulitzer Center’s numbers only capture its direct partners, not teachers who began teaching 1619 independently. The Center also held 1619 events in collaboration with the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the American Federation of Teachers — the second largest teachers’ union in America (the largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, promotes the 1619 curriculum on its website).
Some districts integrated The 1619 Project directly into their curriculum. In Chicago Public Schools, AP U.S. History was taught “through The 1619 Project.” District officials in Newark, New Jersey provided American History classes with copies of The Project and supplementary materials from the Pulitzer Center. Buffalo, New York mandated The Project for 7th to 12th-graders. Several D.C. high schools integrated The Project into history, English, and social studies classes, and 11th graders at one school organized a day-long community event inspired by The Project featuring a gospel choir, poetry exhibits, and performers representing African-American innovators throughout U.S. history.
Reports of The 1619 Project being taught in schools, and associated concerns over critical race theory for which The Project became the poster child, led conservative politicians to act. In late 2020, President Trump created The 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education, which released an advisory report a few days before President Biden disbanded it. By the end of summer 2021, 27 states had introduced and 12 states had passed “divisive concepts” bills preventing teachers from saying that any group is inherently superior to another or that an individual is responsible for the actions of another based on their race, ethnicity, or sex.
Florida’s State Board of Education went so far as to prohibit the teaching of The 1619 Project in schools, while Texas passed a law preventing students from being required to understand The Project as part of any course. In 2025, Texas’s Attorney General sued an Austin school district for using 1619 Project curricula and teaching materials, with a judge ordering the district to comply with the state’s law against teaching critical race theory.
These restrictions sparked their own backlash. Republican lawmakers were attacked by the largest teachers’ unions, historian associations, and civil liberties groups in America, who accused them of censorship, bigotry, and most significantly, of wanting to “suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.”
Despite divisive concept laws in many states, critical race theory remains ubiquitous in K-12 education. A 2025 Education Next survey found that 36 percent of high school students say their teachers say “America is a fundamentally racist nation” often or almost daily. This mirrors work from 2022 by political scientists Eric Kaufmann and Zach Goldberg, who found that 41 percent of high schoolers had been taught “white people have white privilege” and 80 percent reported being exposed to one or more critical race theory concepts at school.
These beliefs persist because they are deeply entrenched in popular culture, academia, and particularly in the K-12 world. But their appeal lies in the fact that without them, it is challenging to explain racial inequality in America within the bounds of polite discourse. Historical and structural explanations — which are favored by the Left — shift the blame from individuals to systems of oppression.
Cultural and psychological explanations, favored by the Right, do the opposite, locating the causes of inequality in choices, values, and attitudes. If America’s founding was a purposefully racist endeavor, then racial inequality is to be expected. If America is not systemically racist, then why does racial inequality persist?
It’s only fair for Americans to be outraged over the teaching of factually inaccurate and ideologically charged materials in K-12 schools. They’re right to insist that the study and teaching of history cannot sacrifice truth for any reason, and that critical race theory and associated concepts undermine both truth and social cohesion. And yet, they must reckon with the fact that there is an undeniable demand for these kinds of ideas and materials among students and educators, a demand that legislation will not be enough to deter.
The fight over The 1619 Project is, at bottom, a fight over whether America is systemically racist. Its staying power in schools, despite formidable criticism and legislative pushback, demonstrates the enduring desire for a story of America that explains racial inequality — past and present. Conservatives can pass laws prohibiting concepts or curricula, but without an alternative explanation of racial inequality in America that is honest and compelling, students and teachers will opt for resources like 1619 again and again.