Bill would withhold state funds from any Mississippi school teaching The 1619 Project

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - A bill introduced into the Mississippi Senate would withhold state funds from any school teaching from The 1619 Project curriculum.

If passed, the Saving American History in Mississippi Schools Act would require that any school which does teach from The 1619 Project curriculum to have their state funding reduced by 25 percent.

The controversial, Pulitzer-Prize winning 1619 Project, developed by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, sought to reframe the reader’s perception of America; that it was not birthed in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence but rather in 1619, when the first slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia.

Some historians, though, have been critical of Hannah-Jones’ work, calling it “disturbing” and “very unbalanced.”

Sen. Angela Burks Hill, writer of the Saving American History in Mississippi Schools Act, agrees, describing the project as “racially divisive.” She also writes that it is a “revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded.”

The bill argues that the nation’s true founding “is July 4, 1775, the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress.”

The Declaration of Independence was officially adopted on July 4, 1776.

To read the entire bill, click HERE.