Black Americans stake a founding claim to America that rivals 1776

Evidence

My father, one of those many Black Americans who answered the call, knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That Black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true founding fathers. And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than we do. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 87

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the central reframing thesis in its most distilled form — 1619 as an origin date equal in weight to 1776, and Black Americans as founding fathers.