" Hannah-Jones also wrote that since McPherson is a Civil War historian, his viewpoint also doesn’t matter because “the 1619 Project scans 400 years and is absolutely not a history of the Civil War.” She did not give an opinion about the other historians who disputed the project. The project, which Hannah-Jones herself said “scans 400 years,” would include the Civil War as it began in 1861."

I received my undergraduate degree in History. This assertion by Hannah-Jones is patently false. In order to study any event, one has to study much further back in time than the episode in question. I took a year long Civil War course at the University of Cincinnati, and we studied colonization. It was necessary to get a firm grip on the subject matter. To use another example, I also took a World War II course. In order to study World War II, you have to go back to events in Europe in the late 19th century to get full context of what occurred in the next century.