The enslaved lacked institutional narrators telling their story on their own terms.

Evidence

The story of the master never wanted for narrators. The masters, to tell their story, had at call all the talent and genius that wealth and influence could command. They have had their full day in court. Literature, theology, philosophy, law and learning have come willingly to their service, and, if condemned, they have not been condemned unheard.” As Douglass said, “My part has been to tell the story of the slave.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1457

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the project’s self-understanding: telling the slave’s story against the slaveholder’s well-narrated one, framing 1619’s reframing argument as a correction of narrative asymmetry.
• SEED: Angle: ‘narrative infrastructure’ — how the side with wealth and institutions controls whose story becomes history; Douglass’s line as a thesis for analyzing whose origin stories get told.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s case study of how reframing arguments work: the master’s story is the default origin story, and 1619 positions itself as the corrective counter-narrative.