Pulitzer Prize to New York Times Essay Falsely Claiming American Revolution Was Fought to Preserve Slavery

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary was awarded Monday to Nikole Hannah-Jones for an essay in the New York Times that falsely claimed the American Revolution was fought primarily to protect slavery.

The essay, titled “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” launched the Times‘ controversial 1619 project.

The essay incorrectly claimed that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776 (signing began weeks later, on August 2).

However, the far more egregious error was Hannah-Jones’s claim about the cause for which the Revolution was fought. She wrote: “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact 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.”

That passage, which appeared in the original text, has since been updated to include the word “some” (emphasis added): “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”

Historians were outraged by Hannah-Jones’s false claim. One of them, Northwestern University Professor Leslie Harris, was enthusiastic about the 1619 Project, but furious about the inaccurate claim. Harris recalled in Politico:

Ketanji Brown Jackson Called an ‘Embarrassment’ for Using Social Media Slang in Birthright Citizenship Opinion

Federal judge blocks blue state’s law prohibiting ICE agents from wearing masks on the job

China-Based Tech Mogul Who Funds US Communist Groups in Grand Jury Crosshairs: Report

Republican Party to host historic midterm convention in Dallas, Trump announces on Truth Social

Fox News Poll: Maine Senate race is tight, with concerns about both candidates

House backs Massie’s push to release taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlement records

California couple says moving company doubled their price and is now holding belongings ‘for ransom’: report

USPS worker arrested after alleged mass shooting threat against Texas Pride event, FBI says

AfD wants to end German boycott on Russian energy, says failed Ukraine invasion shows Kremlin is no threat

Beloved Star, Outspoken Christian Kelsey Grammer Mulling Run for Office

JD Vance Explains How Leftist Motto Is ‘a Disgusting Butchering of the Nicene Creed’

Five countries in Latin America have elected pro-Trump governments since his election

Bar complaint accuses Biden-appointed district judge of dishonesty during DOJ tenure

Lawmakers press Eli Lilly for China drug trials tied to military-linked hospitals

Dems join Republicans to crush Tlaib’s war powers resolution in lopsided House vote

On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against with her fact-checker: that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America.

…

I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.

…

Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. I was concerned that critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking. So far, that’s exactly what has happened.

The current version of Hannah-Jones’s essay preserves other controversial statements, such as the claim that “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” which repeats (almost verbatim) a claim then-President Barack Obama made in 2015 to National Public Radio that racism is “still part of our DNA.”