How does the story of the United States change if we mark the beginning of its history in 1619 instead of 1776? That question, posed in material that the 1619 Project is putting before schoolchildren, moves us beyond matters of fact. But I think a revision of the nation’s founding date would be a substantive mistake that would impede social justice, diminishing a moment that elicits this country’s best while pushing tens of millions of Americans further toward the margins of our national story.

In her essay, Hannah-Jones illuminates the brutality of slavery and the vital ways in which African Americans helped bring about a more perfect union, underscoring the impressiveness of their contributions by skillfully juxtaposing the subjugation most faced with the patriotism most exhibited. “Despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all,” she wrote, “black Americans believed fervently in the American creed.” I concur with her that the plantations of antebellum America are better called “forced labor camps,” that black abolitionists warrant status as Founding Fathers, and that “no people has a greater claim” than African Americans to the Stars and Stripes.

I would add that neither the white settlers at Jamestown, nor the enslaved Africans sold there, nor the author of the Declaration, nor the African Americans denied the rights enumerated therein, nor any of the people celebrated on national holidays has any greater claim to this country’s flag than the most recently naturalized American of any race, color, or creed. Neither white nor black Americans belong at the center of U.S. history, because no racial group belongs there more or less than any other.

American members of the Mayflower Society; descendants of enslaved Africans; Navajos; grandchildren of refugees from Communist dictatorships; Hispanics with ancestors subsumed into the U.S. with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; and newly naturalized, foreign-born Muslims all share this: utterly equal claims to this creedal, individualist nation, where citizenship is grounded in universalist ideals. The United States can flourish, with its many races, ethnicities, religions, and national-origin groups, because all sorts of people can unite around the principles that every human is created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America flounders most when blood-and-soil factions reject those principles.

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For those reasons, I’ve always wanted children to be taught—as I was—that the United States was founded on July 4, 1776, with the declaration of those revolutionary ideals, rather than when the first North Americans crossed a land bridge from Asia into modern Alaska, when the Mayflower arrived, when George Washington’s army secured victory over the British, or when the Constitution was ratified. The words put forth in 1776 would inspire people all over the world to insist that governments are meant to secure rights, and that “when any government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.” Those words resonated with Toussaint Louverture every bit as much as with Thomas Jefferson. How unique and useful to peg our founding to the expression of ideals that all can share, that are relevant across identities and generations, and that coincided with the moment when the earliest residents of our country formally broke with the prior regime, establishing a nation that endures today. To assert such ideals as our exalted beginning is to intensify the pressure to live up to them.