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:

Dem congressional candidate Bobby Pulido depicts lewd behavior in controversial music video for his song

AIPAC-backed Chicago Democrat loses primary despite outside spending blitz

Former congresswoman wins primary to take back former suburban Chicago seat

Democrat Patty García gains party’s nomination after controversial last-minute dropout by incumbent

WATCH: Tom Homan Exposes the Entire Dem Scheme With Illegals, Says They ‘Sold This Country Out for Future Political Power’

Two dead in Israel after Iranian missile attack near Tel Aviv

Pittsburgh police officers accused of ignoring ICE agents’ struggle with suspect

Upscale shopping district rocked by alleged antisemitic beating as lawyer, 2 others charged

Bombshell Whistleblower Report: Mueller’s Anti-Trump Witch Hunters Drank on the Job, Tried to Doctor Records, Violated Security Rules

Bombshell: O’Keefe Videos Indisputable Proof of Huge CA Voter Fraud – So Big Newsom’s Office Instantly Called for Prosecution

Trump calls mail in voting corrupt as Senate begins debate on SAVE Act requiring voter ID

Dems unmoved as White House reveals DHS concessions in shutdown battle

BREAKING: SAVE America Act Clears Major Hurdle in the Senate And Is One Step Closer to Becoming Law

House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Pam Bondi

Breaking Report: Joe Kent Was Leaker Who Had Been Cut from President’s Intel Briefings for Months

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.”