For MLK Day, WH Releases Its 1776 Commission Report

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The outgoing Trump administration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day released a report by President Trump's 1776 Commission that emphasizes American history education that aims at instilling patriotic pride.

The project was headed by the conservative Hillsdale College and aimed to counter recent educational history that focuses on darker aspects of American history, such as the enslavement of kidnapped Africans to support economic growth. Namely, the New York Times' 1619 Project was criticized by conservatives for its "factual errors" and its "inaccurate" theories on capitalism, said the Heritage Foundation.

The warring titles of the two projects belie the essence of the battle for historical narrative. The 1619 Project asserts American history begins in 1619 with the arrival of the first Africans brought to colonial shores as slaves. The title "1776 Project" represents an emphasis on the traditional history that teaches America was founded when it demanded and won its independence from Britian, a history that critics say at best de-emphasizes slavery.

The 1776 Commission was chaired by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn. His final product offers an introduction that admits America's history is less than perfect but says, "The story of America is the story of this ennobling struggle."

The report features a pull-out quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The 1776 report offers an explanation for why it was that only very recently were the rights of Black Americans recognized as possibly equal with that of others.

"In a sense, the precepts of the American founders were known to prior thinkers, but those thinkers stated them in entirely different terms to fit the different political and intellectual circumstances of their times," the report says.

Slavery is a subtopic under "Challenges to America's Principles" in the 1776 Report. The section begins: "The most common charge leveled against the founders, and hence against our country itself, is that they were hypocrites who didn’t believe in their stated principles, and therefore the country they built rests on a lie."

The report denies this and lays blame for civic disunity on those who accuse the founders of hypocrisy. "This charge is untrue and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric.

Nikole Hannah-Jones earned a Pulitzer Prize for her creation of the 1619 Project.

Read the 1776 Report document here.