The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Greenwood Jasmine Mans The whistle of an unnatural wind gave word there would be a lynching, of a Negro boy who shined shoes, not a rapist, just a boy, a child boy, teenage boy, nineteen-year-old boy still fresh in his days. And a wind that would not know the enormity of its crime until morning filled air with turpentine. – An invasion led by Klansmen, a hate that would outdo itself to a menacing ritual of fire, wood, and blood. The bombs turned clouds into shadows of themselves. Single-engine aircrafts hovered so low the bodies under them thought the world was ending, and how could it not be “Run, Negro!” Thirty-five(ish) blocks, and a flame that spent days burning itself tired, Three hundred (ish) Black folks murdered into anonymity. Greenwood has a soggy, muck clay, a damp inconsistency of earth, Constitution, and bone. Some buried, homeless, in Oaklawn, some trampled beneath the dirt. A history tucked away in attic floorboards long enough to forget all it once was. America has a way of dancing with its own delusion. Unable to keep count of its murders because it, then, would have to keep count of its murderers, its good neighbors. All insurance claims denied to the residents of Greenwood and business owners of Black Wall Street. And, left, a people holding their memory through tongue folklore, blood, postcard, church tale. A people chasing a memory that wasn’t supposed to become a memory at all.