Recent historians established slavery as central to American development

Evidence

The work of these scholars, who were often inspired to ask new questions about our past by focusing on primary source material inaccessible to or ignored by previous generations, has made clear the central role that slavery and anti-Blackness played in the development of our society and its institutions. To argue otherwise, among professional historians, is now widely understood to be anachronistic and ahistorical. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 31

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s core task of separating the reframing thesis (slavery foundational, not peripheral) from specific contested claims — this locates the reframing claim’s scholarly grounding.