Paul Kelleher
B.A., M.A., Harvard
Ph.D., Teacher’s College, Columbia
Public school teacher, principal,
superintendent in New York
and Connecticut
Professor and Department Chair,
Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas
Four Classes
10:30 – 12:00 (Zoom ONLY)
April 4, 11, 18, 25
In August 2019, The New York Times published an extraordinary collection of essays, poems, stories and photos entitled “The 1619 Project.” The Project proposes a “new origin story” for the United States, beginning in 1619 with the arrival in Virginia of the first ship carrying slaves rather than in 1776 with the beginning of the American Revolution. The Project argues that the history we have accepted and taught marginalizes the centrality of White supremacy and systemic racism, not only to slavery but also to the Revolution itself, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow eras, and to who we are today as a people. This course will take an in-depth look at the Project’s arguments as well as discuss the controversies that its publication spawned. We will also consider important questions about what history is and who decides what history is taught in our schools. We will look at examples of the Project’s curriculum and will consider whether American history textbooks may have fostered White supremacist views.