Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) may have referred to the ancient practice of bloodletting when he famously said, “Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease.”

We need not go that far here, but new laws proposed in five states to ban the teaching of the 1619 Project are the wrong solution to a very real problem. The New York Times introduced the 1619 Project in 2019, on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves in the American colonies. Its goals were not modest. The project seeks to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery … at the very center of our national narrative.” The project sought to redefine the founding of America to 1619, with its economic system of slavery, rather than in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence or the 1787 signing of the Constitution.