The Significance of the 1619 Project

One of the numerous narratives that comprise The 1619 Project, "The White Gold," by Khalil Muhammad, offers an especially fascinating analysis of the connection between economics, history, and contemporary issues. Muhammad skillfully blends the history of economic exploitation and forced labor in Louisiana during the 19th century with the sobering realities of the sugar industry's ongoing effects on Black communities. In the first line of his essay, Muhammad shockingly asserts that more Black people die from sugar poisoning than from any other race in the modern era. The complex tale he tells, which begins with the mistreatment of Black labor on sugar plantations in the 1800s, is powerfully introduced by this bold assertion.

The 1619 Project seeks to reinterpret American history by highlighting the ways in which slavery serves as the foundation upon which the country was built and by exploring the implications of choosing 1619 to be the year of the country's founding. The goal is to provide a more comprehensive picture of the institution that molded the country by centering the narrative citizens tell about themselves and about who they are as a nation around the effects of slavery and the contributions made by Black Americans. Essays about everything from rush-hour traffic to mass incarceration that have their roots in slavery and its aftermath make up this project, which focuses on various facets of modern American society. Though most Americans think of cotton or tobacco when they envision a plantation, the Louisiana sugar industry was one of the country’s biggest economic anchors during plantation slavery. Known as “white gold,” and prized the world over, the sugar industry was a particularly dangerous and demanding one for enslaved workers. Unlike cotton, which is picked and then processed afterward, sugarcane has to be cut by hand and processed quickly, on dangerous equipment and in hot furnaces, to circumvent its short shelf life.