In August 2019, The New York Times published an interactive project titled 1619. The multimedia project was directed by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones and featured contributions by writers, poets and photographers. The release of the 1619 project coincided with the 400th anniversary of what is said to be the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony. Producers for the project pointed out that in order to understand white supremacy and systemic racism in the United States, you shouldn't simply begin at the founding of the country in 1776. They argued that you should go back as far as 1619, when a Portuguese ship carrying 20 enslaved people from West Africa arrived on the shores of what is known today as Port Comfort, Virginia. This, of course, drew criticism from some on the right-wing, who dismissed the project as anti-american propaganda. However, the Washington, D.C. building that white supremacist in chief Donald Trump occupies today was built by enslaved Africans. Today, close to a year after the release of the 1619 project, a new and groundbreaking work of historiography compels us to look even farther back beyond 1619 to truly understand white supremacy and systemic racism in the United States.
Dr. Gerald Horne, a longtime guest and special friend of Sojourner Truth, has released a new book titled, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. The apocalypse makes reference to the time period in which African and Indigenous people were enslaved, tortured and killed by the millions. In his book, Dr. Horne revisits the history of the 1500s, which is a century that is often overlooked when it comes to colonial history.
