A Response To The 1619 Project – With Tim Barton At The ProFamily Legislators Conference: Is the 1619 Project telling the truth…or rewriting our history? Are candy bars really racist? Did America create slavery? Did Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the project really say she didn’t care about accuracy? How did a number of atrocities end in America? Where did the nickname Indiana “Hoosiers” come from? Tune for this important broadcast; this is one you will want to share as well!

Air Date: 02/17/2021

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, where we’re taking on the hot topics of the day, from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. I’m Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and in America’s Constitution coach, and I have the privilege of serving here on this program with David Barton, America’s premier historian, and our founder at WallBuilders, and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

And Tim is actually going to be the one doing most of the talking today, tomorrow and the next day, because we are sharing a presentation from Tim that he did just a few weeks ago at the WallBuilders ProFamily Legislators Conference. This is a powerful, powerful presentation. It’s a response to the 1619 project. It’s a defense of the American story. It tells the good, the bad and the ugly. And it gives us an opportunity to have a rational, reasonable approach to our nation when put into the context of the history of the world. So it’s a really good presentation. You’re really going to enjoy these next three days, you don’t want to miss the next two. So if something happens, and you missed the program tomorrow, make sure you check it out at our website, wallbuilderslive.com.

But without any further ado, let’s jump in. Here’s Tim Barton at the ProFamily Legislators Conference speaking on a response to the 1619 project.

ProFamily Legislators Conference

Tim:

I want to help us looking into critical race theory, the 1619 project. These are things that are very, very pertinent in our states right now. If you’re not familiar with a 1619 project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of the people in the New York Times came out and the premise of the 1619 project is that America did not become American in 1776 when we actually did become America separating from Great Britain.

The premise is America actually was birth in 1619 and 1619, becomes significant because that’s when the first shipload of slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia and that’s when America started. It was all birth on slavery. In fact, here is kind of their founding statement. “The 1619 Project is a major initiative from the New York Times observing the anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery, and the contributions of black Americans to the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

Now, in the midst of all of this, there were a whole bunch of articles that became being written by the New York Times. And some of the articles that begin coming out did not make a whole lot of sense, other than they were trying to reframe the way we tell the story of America or what we even understand about America. Such as one of the articles, our democracies founding ideals were false when they were written, “Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True”, that’s the title. And I just took screenshots of a lot of these titles of articles. Here’s what it’s significant.

1619 Project Lies

You could argue that the founding principles of the Declaration were not fully realized in every state when the Declaration was written, that is true. But to say it’s not true that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator, I understand what you’re saying, but also then the argument is that Black Americans fought by themselves for equality. Okay, well, who passed the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment?

Right. Like, I feel like we’ve lost some contexts along the way that it was not always White people against Black people. In fact, the majority of the abolitionists were white people, right, like there was a reason but that’s totally lost in these articles.

America holds on to an undemocratic assumption from its founding that some people deserve more power than others. Okay, help me out. I’m pretty sure we fought the revolution, to say that you don’t have more power than us, in fact, in the Constitution, it’s “We the people,” so we absolutely destroyed that whole argument and narrative at the revolution, right?

The war for independence, but that’s not really what’s being taught in this article. Slavery gave America fear of Black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our prison system.

Now, I’m in favor of prison reform in a lot of areas. I think there are things we can and should do to reform prisons. But here’s a little confusing to me. Violent punishment of Black people still defines our prisons. If this happens, I don’t know about it, needs to stop. But I’ve never heard of this.

More Untruths

What violent punishments are we still giving to Black criminals in prison? That’s new to me. Or the fact that all of us, like all of America is fearful of Black people? I played basketball in college, I was about the only White dude on the team and none of my best friends looked like me. And I wasn’t scared any of them. I love them. Right I don’t really understand what we’re saying right now.

Well, here’s another article. “The sugar that saturates the American diet has barbaric history as the white gold that fueled slavery.” The argument of the article is that candy bars are racist. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but you can read the article. Most Americans still don’t know the full story of slavery.

This is the history you didn’t learn in schools. Now that statement is true. That headline, that article is true.

Most people don’t know the actual story of slavery. But what do you mean when you say they don’t know the story of slavery? What aspect of slavery do you think people aren’t learning they need to learn?

Well, if you remember, Senator Tim Kaine, he said, well, what people don’t know about slavery is that America created slavery. That’s a US senator from Virginia. Okay. If you know your Bible, Joseph’s coat of many colors was sold by his brothers into slavery. Moses, the deliverer of the Israelites delivered them out of slavery.

And even if you don’t know the Bible, how did you miss the history of the Greeks and the Romans? Right, like slave empires. This is absolutely crazy. But it gets even crazier, because there’s other articles and there’s other movements, such as in the NBA, this is one of their articles.

Slavery Does Not Define America

The NBA, the very term owners come under fire as players, most of whom are Black assert self-determination. They say owner is a reference to slavery. I was a business major in college.

We’re in favor of entrepreneurship. And I would love more people to own businesses. Owning businesses does not mean you own the employees. And I don’t know anybody making that assertion, but this is the kind of stuff that’s happening.

Now, these are all articles from the 1619 websites. I just copied and pasted yesterday as I was putting this together. Okay, as of yesterday, these are still articles on the website. At the bottom of their website, they say, “Oh, by the way, teachers, if you need help in your classroom, we have curriculum, and that curriculum is being promoted in all 50 states to teach students these kinds of things in lessons.”

Now, if you also have paid attention to this, what you know is last month, there was a lot of professors and maybe two months now, there’s been a lot of professors coming out attacking this, attacking the credibility of it, saying this doesn’t make any sense, it’s very flawed history.

Slavery is not the defining thing, or it is not what define America, was not the motivating factor of America. That’s not why they fought the revolution. Secular leftist professors have even come out and said this was bogus.

Now also, it’s worth noting, when the New York Times was doing this project, they hired a couple of professors to give guidance on the articles that professors told Hannah that these articles aren’t correct. She said, I don’t care about what is accurate, I’m trying to change the narrative, in case you don’t record for that. She don’t care what’s true. I’m trying to change the narrative. This is where we are and what we are seeing.

The American Story

Rick:

Time for a quick break, guys. You’ve been listening to Tim Barton speaking at the ProFamily Legislators Conference, but we got to take a quick break. We’ll be right back.

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery.

Which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out of statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story. Starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America, not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilder.com, The American Story.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. You’re listening to Tim Barton on a presentation in response to the 1619 project. He did this at the ProFamily Legislators Conference just a few weeks ago. Let’s dive right back in where we left off before the break.

Their Only Correction

TIM:

The 1619 project has issued a correction. It’s on their website. So of all of the things they claim, I know many of them are wrong. I’m just curious, well, what did they know they got wrong? Here’s the one correction they’ve issued on their website. “An earlier version of the introduction to the project referred incorrectly to Virginia in the year 1619 as a British colony. At the time, it was an English colony.” That is the correction they have issued to this point. Okay? It is utterly ridiculous.

And one of the things that we don’t really understand very well on America, America is really the tale of two cities. It really is. America is the tale of Jamestown and Plymouth and they both had different ideologies they were promoting, and they both impacted America differently. And if you remember kind of the story of Jamestown, right. Jamestown is founded 1607. It’s an Anglican colony. It’s under the king. And there are some heroes from Jamestown. Right.

You have John smith who is the governor who is one of their military leaders also, right, it’s the story of Pocahontas. And so there are noted people from Jamestown. Now, it’s also worth noting Jamestown had a whole bunch of issues in their history. Okay. You can go back and read about the starving time when they got into cannibalism because they couldn’t find enough things to eat. They did not have good relations with the natives. Jamestown had a lot of issues. That is true.

Well, the contrast also was Plymouth. Okay. Plymouth was November 16th, November 11th, they the Mayflower Compact, November 13th is when they actually get off. And the reason there was a day between when they actually signed the Compact and when they got off. They signed the compact on Saturday on the 11th.

Plymouth Vs. Jamestown

The 12th was a Sunday. On Sunday, it was a Sabbath and they stayed on board ship all day doing prayer and worship, thanking God that they had made it to a new land. But the Sabbath, they weren’t going to work, they weren’t going to unload.

So they stayed on ship on Sunday. Monday the 13th, they get off. Okay.

So November is when all of this kind of settlement development begins to unfold. This is when Plymouth is really kind of birth. In the midst of this, if you remember your history, you know that they meet an Indian samosa and he speaks a little English and I know some other people and you need to meet them and then they encounter Squanto.

And finally, they have this peace treaty with Chief Massasoit, which is the longest lasting peace treaty between any Anglos in any natives more than 50 years. I think 54 years is the exact number of years this peace treaty lasted. Well, this is kind of the legacy of Plymouth.

Now, the reason people point back to Jamestown is because in 1619, in Jamestown, there was a shipload of slaves that arrived. If you know the history, it’s also worth noting that there was a couple British ships who were out and there was levels of piracy happening and so you attack different ships. Well, the Portuguese had a slave ship. And these two British ships attack the Portuguese ship, and they got some of the slaves off the ship.

Well, they were close to Virginia, so they land in Virginia, and they brought 19 slaves. People say approximately 20, the best number we know is 19. But 19 slaves come to Virginia.

Indentured Servitude

At the time in Virginia, they didn’t actually have slavery per se. They had indentured servitude. Now indentured servitude in this capacity would have been like slavery, but it’s like slavery with an expiration date. Because indentured servitude was generally for Europeans if you wanted to come to the New World.

You couldn’t afford to pay for it, you would find somebody to indenture you, to give you a loan, and then when you got to the New World, you had to work seven years to pay off that loan. Okay. So that was what they had at that time in Jamestown. So these 19 slaves arrived, and they are sold as indentured servants.

Now, the argument would be, but they were still slaves. Okay, so arguably, yes, treated as slaves for seven years. I’m not going to argue the point with you, although I could. Treated as slaves for seven years. But here’s what’s significant. At the end of seven years, they were given their freedom, and they all became landowners in the New World. Okay, I’m going to come back to that in a minute. Right. So even this narrative is not quite the way it’s told today. But people say, well, America was birthed in 1619 slavery. Okay. Well, that was the first load of slaves that arrived in America.

Second load of slaves that arrived in America went to Plymouth. When they arrived in Plymouth, it was in 1646. Except what’s interesting is in 1641, the Pilgrims had passed a series of laws, and of the laws they passed, one of the laws they passed, it actually dealt with slavery. And it said slavery is legal on only two conditions.

North American Slave Trade

Slavery is legal as a punishment for a crime, or if you were captured in a justified warfare, and they defined justified warfare as a word of defense, but also in the 1600s, when people fought war against other people, if you were conquered, there were only two options.

You either were killed or you were enslaved, because that’s the 1600s. Right? This was warfare. It was conquest.

So the pilgrims said slavery is only legal on two conditions. But what’s interesting is they also passed another law that year, and they said, man stealing is illegal and a capital offense. Now, man stealing, they defined as kidnapping someone from their home and moving them off their continent to another continent to be a slave. Well, that’s interesting, because this is the middle of the North Atlantic slave trade. So guess what that law was targeting?

The North Atlantic slave trade, 1646. That law was passed 1641. 1646, first load of slaves arrived in Plymouth, and they have a law against man stealing. So guess what they do? They arrest the captain and the crew and they charged him with a crime of man stealing and they freed the slaves.

They then took up a commission and they said, we’re going to pay to send the slaves back wherever they came from, and we are funding the crew, the ship, the food, everything they need, we are funding that to get them back. The reason I point this out, there is a difference in the legacy of Plymouth, and Jamestown.

And people are saying, well, the legacy of America starts in Jamestown, except remember, there’s a distinction of these two colonies and even their ideals and their biblical values. Plymouth was defined as being a people that believed in the Bible and wanted to follow the Bible.

The Difference

Jamestown was an Anglican colony, but they also were an England colony under the king, and the Anglican was the official religion of England at the time under the king. And so they were doing whatever the king told them. They did not know the Bible, or follow the Bible.

That’s a difference. It’s kind of like people that profess me with their mouth, but they don’t follow me in their lifestyle, arguably, that was a lot of people in Jamestown were not living biblically, but Plymouth did.

In 1888, there was a map showing the impact of Plymouth and Jamestown in America, and how the principles that were established in Plymouth, the principles of Republican form of government, of the freedom, of religion to the freedom of speech, so much that is central to who we are and what we do, the free market economic system, all of that was birth in Plymouth. And the majority of the nation was impacted more so by the principles of Plymouth than by the principles of Jamestown.

The principles of Jamestown that promoted a lot of selfishness and self interest in slavery, that certainly impacted the nation. But it impacted the nation in different ways and not all of America was impacted equally by the principles of Jamestown. But here’s why I bring this up.

I have been in the midst of traveling. I listened to Audible quite a lot. I have a lot of books on Audible. I just finished listening to 1984 again.

George Orwell

If you don’t remember George Orwell, go back and read 1984 or listen to in your car, it is shocking to think about where we are in America. But here’s one of the things he says in that book 1984. “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” But think about this. Whoever controls the past controls the future.

Why? Because the only way you can fundamentally transform and change America forever, is you have to hate everything America is and was. Well, the only way you hate everything in America is and was is you have to hate the past, which there’s no surprise that we are villainizing every single person now in American history. Because if we’re going to change the future, you first have to change the past. Right. And this is what we are seeing this is what is being promoted. And here’s what’s interesting.

In the midst of what is being taught now, 1619 project, they’re talking about so much of the evil and atrocity that America did, and in honesty, some of what they say is true. There are moments in American history when people in America did great evil, when they did very sinful and even wicked things. And I can walk you through a lot of those moments and a lot of events.

But here’s what I will tell you that makes America so different than everywhere else. Is you pick any atrocity you want in American history, you pick anyone, and the only question I want to know is how did that atrocity end in America?

Like why doesn’t it still go on today? How did slavery end in America? How did we achieve these things we achieve? How did we end the atrocity?

What Made America Different

And the reason that’s an important question to ask is because without exception, every time you look for how the atrocity ended, you will find pastors and Christians and churches, who are leading the fight to stop the atrocity. What has made America different is not that we didn’t have problems, every nation in the world has had problems, what’s made America different is Christianity has helped correct those problems in America faster than anywhere else in the world. Okay. And this is a big deal.

With that being said, one of the things is 1619 project, as they want to do is reintroduce black heroes in America. Well, there’s a couple kinds of black heroes you can have. You can have Martin Luther King, Jr. You can have Malcolm X. Right? And right now, if you go to the Smithsonian Museum of African American history in Washington, DC, Malcolm X has an entire floor to himself. Martin Luther King Jr. has literally the corner in one room on one floor.

Rick:

Alright, friends, we got to take a quick break here. Tim Barton is speaking at the ProFamily Legislators Conference on Black history and on the issue of the 1619 project. And of course, it’s February, that’s Black History month here in the United States. And so this is a perfect time to get some really good history, some true history, not a tainted Marxist view and effort to try to destroy our nation.

But, instead some good history. And that’s what today, tomorrow, and Friday are all about. We’re sharing with you Tim Barton’s presentation on the 1619 project. This was recorded at the ProFamily Legislators Conference just a few weeks ago. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back, we’ll pick up where we left off with Tim Barton.

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Rick:

We’re back on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Let’s jump right back into that presentation from Tim Barton on a response to the 1619 project.

True Black American Heroes

Tim:

Because if you look at American history, unquestionably, there were some amazing heroes who were Black Americans and Black patriots that today I would say should be remember, people like the Reverend Harry Hoosier. Okay. The Reverend Harry Hoosier was a guy who was a pastor in the second great awakening. Now he was a former slave, who got saved, who got his freedom, and now as a young Christian, he wants to do something to make a difference. He partnered up.

Francis Asbury invited Harry Hoosier to join him, Francis Asbury was one of the major evangelists of the time and he traveled all over the country. And Francis Asbury said, why don’t you come with me, and I’ll talk to all of the high end, the white collar people, and then the blue collar, the low, the workers, the farmers, other slaves, you can talk to them because everybody needs the gospel, but we’ll have a different skill set. So that’s what they did. They began traveling together.

And Francis Asbury would be on one side, Harry Hoosier on the other side, and they’re preaching the same time. Except what was interesting is Francis Asbury said very quickly, Harry began to draw larger crowds than I did, because the people wanted to hear him speak more than they wanted to hear me speak.

One of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Rush, who knew every major Founding Father, he served on the first three different presidents administrations. He signed the Declaration of ratify the Constitution. He knew everybody.

Benjamin Rush said that when he heard Harry Hoosier speak, he said, given the fact that he never had any official training, he is the best speaker I have ever heard in my entire life. Now, that’s quite interesting, because he had heard every major Founding Father, philosopher, American thinker, hear them all, he said, Harry Hoosier is the best.

Reverend Harry Hoosier

Harry Hoosier, after he travels for a while with Francis Asbury, he then goes off. And he wants to reach the people, right, the rough people who need the gospel, and he begins sharing with some of the wild frontiersman. And as America this time is developing and we have now new territories that are joining on the union.

He is talking and preaching to people that are going West, expanding the territory. Where he is and where he’s preaching, people are being saved, there’s dramatic convergence, and those people begin to move west.

And by the way, one of the things historically that is true, if you go back and read the book of Acts, what you will discover is Jesus’s disciples did not call themselves Christians. It was other people that called them Christians. And actually, what you will discover is that a lot of the titles that are often given by the people are not encouraging positive titles. It’s like, oh, you’re one of those Christians, right? You follow Christ. You’re one of those guys.

Well, believers, right, Antioch, they’re first given this name. Well, the followers who were converts under Harry Hoosier, they had a different theological position than the people in the area where they were living. And when they begin to have theological arguments, people would go, oh, you’re just one of those Hoosier’s, we know who you are.

Because the Hoosiers of the time they were in an area that was still very much Calvinistic, very heavily Calvinistic. In the Second Great Awakening, there was a lot of choice involved, and you need to choose to be righteous and godly and choose God and choose this. And so they were talking about choosing God, and the Calvinists would get angry at him and said, oh, you’re one of those Hoosier’s converts, we know who you are.

Indiana State Website

Well, guess what? The Hoosier’s converts began moving West. And as they moved West, they went out into the Indian Territory. the Indian Territory, if you remember, right, the state is known as the Hoosier State.

Here’s what’s fascinating. You can get on the Indiana State website, and you look up where did the name Hoosier come from? And they will tell you on their state website, we don’t really know for sure where it came from. But there are a few options that are possibilities.

They say, number one, there was an Indian word for corn name hosey, and it’s possible that hosey evolved to hosier which is like Hoosier, so maybe it’s from the Indian name for corn. Or number two, it’s possible that people back then had really thick accents, and so when somebody knocked on the door and you would say, who’s there? Maybe it sounded like Who’s there? You know, maybe.

The third option. They said in the early 1800s, there was a very large town and there was a huge drunken brawl in this town. And it was alleged that during the drunken brawl, somebody got their ear ripped off. So at the end of the brawl, somebody picked up the ear and said, who’s ear?

A Response To The 1619 Project – With Tim Barton At The ProFamily Legislators Conference

Right. So maybe they say, or the fourth option is there was a black minister, his name is Black Harry or Black Harry Hoosier who was an evangelist who had a lot of influence in the Indiana Territory, it’s possible the name Hoosier came from Harry Hoosier, but we don’t know for sure.

Okay, like this is the silliness of what we see with modern academics. But this is the reality is the Hoosier states, the only thing that actually makes sense is that it was named after the people who converted under Harry Hoosier, who went to the state, who are known as Hoosier, such as Hoosier state because of Harry Hoosier…

Rick:

Alright, friends, we’re out of time for today. We will pick up right where we left off. Tim Barton speaking at the ProFamily Legislators Conference, you don’t want to miss it. Make sure you tune in tomorrow. That will be the middle of his presentation. Today was the beginning, tomorrow will be the middle, and then Friday, we’ll get the conclusion. Thanks so much for listening today to WallBuilders Live.