James Oakes on What’s Wrong with The 1619 Project – #46

Steve and Corey talk to James Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about “The 1619 Project” developed by The New York Times Magazine. The project argues that slavery was the defining event of US history. Jim argues that slavery was actually the least exceptional feature of the US and that what makes the US exceptional is that it is where abolition first begins. Steve wonders about the views of Thomas Jefferson who wrote that “all men are created equal” but still held slaves. Jim maintains many founders were hypocrites, but Jefferson believed what he wrote.

Other topics: Northern power, Industrialization, Capitalism, Lincoln, Inequality, Cotton, Labor, Civil War, Racism/Antiracism, Black Ownership.

Resources

• Transcript
• James Oakes (Bio)
• Oakes and Colleagues Letter to the NYT and the Editor’s Response (NYT)
• The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts (The Atlantic)
• The World Socialist Web Site interview with James Oakes
• Benjamin Lay, the first revolutionary abolitionist (Smithsonian Mag)
• Oakes, J. (2016). Capitalism and Slavery and the Civil War. International Labor and Working-Class History
• Wright, G. (2020), Slavery and Anglo‐American capitalism revisited . The Economic History Review
• John J. Clegg, “Capitalism and Slavery,” Critical Historical Studies 2
• Olmstead, Alan L. & Rhode, Paul W., 2018. “Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism,” Explorations in Economic History

For those interested in exploring Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s views further Professor Oakes recommends the following books:

• John C. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
• Graham A. Peck, Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom