In the opening pages of Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness, Charles Kesler suggests that the civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in 2020 should be called “the 1619 riots.” As readers of Law & Liberty know, this refers to the New York Times’ controversial “1619 Project,” which claimed that the true founding of the United States came with the arrival of slaves in America, not the Revolution or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the driving force behind the “1619 Project,” replied to Kesler, “It would be an honor.” Current debates over race, social justice, and civil rights, they agree, raise fundamental questions about the status of the Declaration and its “self-evident truth” that “all men are created equal.”
