The 1619 Project, championed by Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times, has been canonized by progressives and is now being taught in more than 4,500 American classrooms. Vice President Kamala Harris jumped on the bandwagon last June when she told school children "black people in America" suffered "400 years of slavery." Harris did not specify when she expunged the Civil War and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation from the history books.

African-American slavery was a profound injustice, and we should not downplay that abhorrent part of our nation's past. But the 1619 Project is riddled with errors that have been debunked across the ideological spectrum by economic historian Phil Magness (who has done the best debunking), Professor Gordon Wood, the World Socialist Web Site, and many other respectable critics. The 1619 Project's most harebrained idea is that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. This notion is impossible to reconcile with the fact that the conflict erupted in northern colonies with few slaves. The 1619 storyline could not have passed the laugh test unless many Americans were clueless on the British brutality that sparked the war.