Brown Professor & Pulitzer Prize Winner Wood Battles New York Times Over Slavery Series
GoLocalProv News Team and Kate Nagle
Brown Professor & Pulitzer Prize Winner Wood Battles New York Times Over Slavery Series
"Demonstrating the importance of slavery in the history of our country is essential and commendable," said Wood. "But that necessary and worthy goal will be seriously harmed if the facts in the project turn out to be wrong and the interpretations of events are deemed to be perverse and distorted."
Last week, the NYT published Wood’s — along with four other historians — letter online contesting the series with what the academics said were “strong reservations about important aspects” of the NYT project.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain ‘in order to ensure slavery would continue,’” the historians wrote. “This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding.”
After the NYT publically refused to issue any corrections, Wood provided GoLocalProv.com with his latest response -- in which he said he believes the project "will lose credibility."
READ FULL LETTER BELOW
Sparring in National Media Spotlight
National media picked up on the battle between Wood and his academic colleagues -- and the New York Times.
“‘So wrong in so many ways’ is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s ‘1619 Project,’” wrote the Wall Street Journal.
“James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an ‘unbalanced, one-sided account’ that ‘left most of the history out.’ Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party,” the WSJ continued.
After receiving Wood's letter co-signed by Victoria Bynum, distinguished emerita professor of history, Texas State University; James M. McPherson, George Henry Davis 1886 emeritus professor of American history, Princeton University; James Oakes, distinguished professor, the Graduate Center, the City University of New York; and Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886 professor of American history, Princeton University; the NYT fired back in support of project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones.
“Valuable critiques may come from many sources. The letter misperceives our attitudes when it charges that we dismiss objections on racial grounds,” wrote the NYT. “This appears to be a reference not to anything published in The 1619 Project itself, but rather to a November Twitter post from Hannah-Jones in which she questioned whether ‘white historians’ have always produced objective accounts of American history.”
READ: NYT’s Response to Academics’ Criticism
In 2011, Wood, professor emeritus of history at Brown, was named a winner of the 2010 National Humanities Medal. The medals, honoring achievements in history, literature, education, and cultural policy, were presented by President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony.
Wood provided GoLocalProv.com with his response to the New York Times’ refusal to make corrections to assertions in the project.
Wood's Second Letter to NYT
I have read your response to our letter concerning the 1619 Project. I have no quarrel with the idea behind the project. Demonstrating the importance of slavery in the history of our country is essential and commendable. But that necessary and worthy goal will be seriously harmed if the facts in the project turn out to be wrong and the interpretations of events are deemed to be perverse and distorted. In the long run the Project will lose its credibility, standing, and persuasiveness with the nation as a whole. I fear that it will eventually hurt the cause rather than help it. We all want justice, but not at the expense of truth.
I have spent my career studying the American Revolution and cannot accept the view that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery." I don't know of any colonist who said that they wanted independence in order to preserve their slaves. No colonist expressed alarm that the mother country was out to abolish slavery in 1776. If southerners were concerned about losing their slaves, why didn't they make efforts to ally with the slaveholding planters in the British West Indies? Perhaps some southern slaveholder were alarmed by news of the Somerset decision, but we don't have any evidence of that. Besides, that decision was not known in the colonies until the fall of 1772 and by that date the colonists were well along in their drive to independence. Remember, it all started in 1765 with the Stamp Act. The same is true of Dunmore's proclamation of 1775. It may have tipped the scales for some hesitant Virginia planters, but by then the revolutionary movement was already well along in Virginia.
There is no evidence in 1776 of a rising movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, as the 1619 Project erroneously asserts, nor is there any evidence the British government was eager to do so. But even if either were the case, ending the Atlantic slave trade would have been welcomed by the Virginia planters, who already had more slaves than they needed. Indeed, the Virginians in the years following independence took the lead in moving to abolish the despicable international slave trade.
How could slavery be worth preserving for someone like John Adams, who hated slavery and owned no slaves? If anyone in the Continental Congress was responsible for the Declaration of Independence, it was Adams. And much of our countrymen now know that from seeing the film of the musical "1776." Ignoring his and other northerners' roles in the decision for independence can only undermine the credibility of your project with the general public. Far from preserving slavery the North saw the Revolution as an opportunity to abolish the institution. The first anti-slave movements in the history of the world, supported by whites as well as blacks, took place in the northern states in the years immediately following 1776.
I could go on with many more objections, some of which I mentioned in my interview with the World Socialist Website. But for now this may be enough to justify some correction and modification of the project. Again, let me emphasize my wholehearted support of the goal of the project to demonstrate accurately and truthfully to all Americans the importance of slavery in our history.
If you are willing to publish this letter, you may.
Sincerely, Gordon S. Wood