Page 158 - 1619 Project Curriculum

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Guiding 1. How does a person accumulate and keep wealth in the U.S.?
Questions 2. How have policy and exclusion from government wealth-building
programs limited black Americans’ opportunities to accumulate wealth?

16. “Mass Incarceration” by Bryan Stevenson (pages 80–81)

Excerpt “The United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any nation on Earth:
We represent 4 percent of the planet’s population but 22 percent of its
imprisoned. In the early 1970s, our prisons held fewer than 300,000 people;
since then, that number has grown to more than 2.2 million, with 4.5 million
more on probation or parole. Because of mandatory sentencing and ‘three
strikes’ laws, I’ve found myself representing clients sentenced to life without
parole for stealing a bicycle or for simple possession of marijuana. And central
to understanding this practice of mass incarceration and excessive punishment
is the legacy of slavery.”

“It’s not just that this history fostered a view of black people as presumptively
criminal. It also cultivated a tolerance for employing any level of brutality in
response.”

Key Names, 13th Amendment, Black Codes, capital punishment, Reconstruction,
Dates, and sharecropping
Terms

Guiding 1. How have laws been written and enforced in the U.S. over the past 400
Questions years to disproportionality punish black Americans?
2. How does Stevenson argue that the modern day prison system acts as a
continuation of slavery?

17. “Hope” by Djeneba Aduayom (photography), Nikole Hannah-Jones (introduction), and
Wadzanai Mhute (captions) (pages 86–93)

These materials were created to support ​The 1619 Project​, published in ​The New York Times Magazine​ August
2019. You can find this and more educational resources at ​www.pulitzercenter.org/1619