Fun
Knit to This: 1619
Dear Ann,
Most mornings, I start my day listening to a podcast from the New York Times called The Daily, which makes the fire hose of news a little more manageable for my brain. For several weeks, The Daily gave its Friday morning spot to another Times project, the audio series 1619.
1619 is not a 20-minute coffee-break listen. The subject—the history of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in America, which began in 1619—is covered in depth and presented with artistry and skill. (The New Yorker calls it “magnificent,” and I agree.) Every episode presents highly significant facts that were never covered in my education, or likely even known by my teachers.
If you’ve just got time for one episode right now, I recommend Episode 2, “The Economy that Slavery Built.”
It’s compelling; I’ve totally blown out my schedule to finish listening to an episode that I’d only intended to start. My thoughts keep returning to it. I’m grateful to Nikole Hannah-Jones, host of the series and creator of the 1619 project.
Love,
Kay
Love the Daily and was captured by the first ep of this series. Thanks for motivating me to go back to it.
Yes, everyone should listen to 1619. –SO well done. Episode two is gut wrenching. –I’m glad I have it to listen to while knitting and I’m glad I have my knitting while I listen to it!
Listen to 1619 and then the History Chicks episode about Harriet Tubman. All so much more than we ever learned in school.
I’ve read the print version – it’s very good, and bravo to the Times.
But if I recall correctly, 1619 is the date slavery was brought to Jamestown, and the Spanish had spaces as well.
But great work and great to make it so very public.
Thanks for this, for many reasons.Great tracks for knitting, contemplation, growing.
This sounds fascinating! Thank you!
Thank you for bringing this excellent work to our attention. It is stirring and inspiring, and I hope that many will benefit from it.
Many thanks for putting your spotlight on this very relevant series. We knitters get woked!
Doing next to notning….waiting for my yarn shipment….maybe start a pair 0f socks…deb
Thank you.
I think every American should listen to this podcast/read the articles in this project. So important!
Thank you!
I’ve never understood slavery, how we could live like that. As a child, I was moved by Roots, the mini-series. In my twenties, I read Howard Zinn’s, “A Peoples’s History of the United States.” In this, he provided the best explanation of how slavery took hold and progressed in this country. It justified my belief that no-one is better than another human being. Politics, laws, marketing, and generations of behavior created slavery.
Thank you for sharing this podcast. I have loaded it into my favorites, and will begin listening today.
I’m saving this for Winter Knitting.
Thank you so much! As a lifelong knitter, I have often winced at the segregated nature of the craft. This warmed my heart. To paraphrase another comment above, let knitting be woke. 🙂
Love the podcast recommendations…there’s a lot to browse through and I like having a place to start. This is a great piece so far.
I’ve read the print version of 1619 and the Daily but I didn’t know The Daily was also a podcast. Here are two other podcasts you might be interested in: Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell, and LeVar Burton Reads.
To go deeper than a podcast on this topic, I recommend the book “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptiste. It sounds dry as dust but it isn’t. It is beautiful written and filled with the authentic voices of enslaved people. I am the least likely person to pick up a book with economics in the title but Baptiste explains things so well and so powerfully I could hardly put it down. But you won’t be able to knit to it. It demands and deserves your full attention.