Arkansas senator Tom Cotton called the enslavement of millions of African people and their descendants “the necessary evil upon which the union was built” in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.
The Republican lawmaker was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around the date of August 1619 and the first arrival of stave ships on American soil.
The Saving American History Act of 2020 and “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts”, according to a statement from Cotton’s office.
“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that root and branch,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette on Friday. “America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”
He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay to the project, did not respond to a request for comment from the Little Rock newspaper, but tweeted on Friday that Cotton’s bill “speaks to the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career”.
In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton entitled “Send in the troops”, which advocated for the deployment of the military against protesters rallying against police brutality toward black Americans and drew widespread criticism.
Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”. But the Times subsequently issued a statement saying the op-ed fell short of its editorial standards, leading to the resignation of editorial page director James Bennet.
