In a 1995 letter, 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote about how the “white race” historically murdered, raped and pillaged and continues to be composed of “bloodsuckers” today.
Her correspondence to Notre Dame’s The Observer newspaper stated that “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.” The letter was obtained by The Federalist and released Thursday.
The 1619 Project is an attempt by the The New York Times Magazine to reframe the narrative of American history, focusing on slavery and racism. RELATED: ‘Cancel The Fourth’: Conservative Group Releases Ad Targeting 1619 Project)
The sign over the west entrance of the New York Times building at 620 Eighth Ave. April 28, 2016 in New York. (DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)
In her letter to the editor, Hannah-Jones characterized the activity of European explorers as “acts of devils” and equated Christopher Columbus to Adolf Hitler.
“[The whites’] lasting monument was the destruction and enslavement of two races of people,” Hannah-Jones wrote.
She claimed that Africans arrived in the New World well before Europeans did and states in the letter obtained by The Federalist that black people interacted with Native Americans without any violence or malice, offering the Aztec pyramids in Mexico as evidence of this hypothesis.
But she continued, writing that when the Europeans arrived, the climate changed abuptly. “Using Christianity as their excuse, the white race denied the native people their humanity,” adding that the “white race used deceit and trickery, warfare and rape” to steal land from the indigenous people.
Hannah-Jones stated in the letter not much had changed since then.
“The descendants of these savage people pump drugs and guns into the Black community, pack Black people into the squalor of segregated urban ghettos and continue to be bloodsuckers in our community,” Hannah-Jones wrote.
Her letter ended with a claim that, despite all the name-calling, she understood the reason for all this mayhem.
“But after everything that those barbaric devils did, I do not hate them,” she wrote. “I understand that because of some lacking, they needed to constantly prove their superiority.” (RELATED: Top Historians Slam NYT ‘1619 Project’ As It Infiltrates Public School Curriculum)
Throughout the ongoing protests and riots that began with the death of George Floyd after his arrest by Minneapolis police, Hannah-Jones has continued to be outspoken about racial politics. She recently described looting as a “symbolic taking.”
Graffiti is seen on a burned out 7Eleven after riots and looting overnight on June 2, 2020 in St Louis, Missouri. Four police officers were reportedly shot in St. Louis overnight during violent clashes with protesters leading to looting and damage to local businesses. (Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)
She was quick to defend the riots that have engulfed the entire nation, maintaining on June 2 that “destroying property which can be replaced is not violence.” Her argument at that time was that there is a significant difference between a life and a property, and that “violence” should not be used to describe destruction of property.
“I think any reasonable person would say we shouldn’t be destroying other people’s property,” Hannah-Jones told CBS News. “But these are not reasonable times.”
She was again the center of media attention Sunday when she repeated a conspiracy theory that fireworks were a means for the the government to attack “Black and Brown communities.” She apparently temporarily deleted and then reactivated her Twitter account over the backlash.