It Takes Time to Study the Past

How a new exhibit gets history right, in all its complexity and interconnectedness

Last weekend I was in my hometown of Stillwater, Minnesota to wrap up a two-part adult forum for a local church. We had started with The 1619 Project, what it sought to achieve and why it incurred criticism from both academic historians and Republican politicians. But in the second half of the class, I stepped back from that particular project to use th…