In August 2019, the New York Times introduced the 1619 Project, an audacious attempt at fundamentally rewriting American history through the distorting prism of Critical Race Theory.  Neither Nikole Hannah-Jones, the chief architect of the project, nor the majority of the more than thirty contributors to the 100-page special issue, can lay any claim to special expertise in the discipline of history nor in undertaking any original research in the history they seek to rewrite.   In “The Historians’ War Over Nikole Hannah-Jones and the 1619 Project,” Mary Grabar, Resident Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), has entered the lists, for she knows that the outcome of current battles being fought about Hannah-Jones’s credentials and the insinuation of the 1619 Project into schools stand as markers along a course that may well decide the fate of a great nation.

Dr. Grabar’s article appears in June 11 issue of American Greatness, an online journal dedicated to conserving the ideals and institutions that made the United States, at one time, a beacon light to oppressed people around the world.  She begins by discussing the current controversy in which Hannah-Jones is embroiled after being offered a distinguished chair in the school of journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  UNC offered Hannah Jones a five-year contract with a hefty annual salary; she believes she deserves the award of immediate tenure.

Dr. Grabar examines the lines of solidarity that have formed in support of special treatment for Hannah-Jones.  “[T]he ‘distinguished historians’ who signed the letter” of support, Grabar observes, “form a rogues’ gallery of credentialed but compromised historians. Some of them have written history books as dishonest as that written by Hannah-Jones.”  Dr. Grabar examines in particular the work of the Yale historian Glenda Gilmore, one of Hannah-Jones more vocal supporters.

Mary Grabar is the author of Debunking Howard Zinn:  Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation against America (Regnery, 2019), which reached best-seller status on Amazon. In September, Regnery will publish her Debunking “The 1619 Project”:  Exposing the Plan to Divide America.