# Capture — founding ideals were false

- **Claim filed:** “Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written.”
- **Who:** Nikole Hannah-Jones
- **URL:** https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html
- **Date on page:** 2019-08-14
- **Publisher:** The New York Times Magazine
- **Captured:** 2026-08-16
- **Method:** Teaching American History excerpt of the licensed text (`tah-1619.html`); HNN reprint of Leslie Harris (`hnn-harris.html`); Medill on classroom reach (`medill-4500.html`). The live NYT interactive is a thin client.

## Verbatim

Hannah-Jones title / dek (NYT Magazine / Pulitzer reprint):

> Our Founding Ideals of Liberty and Equality Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Fought to Make Them True.

`tah-1619.html` — body:

> The white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst.

> One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.

Pulitzer Center classroom PDF (not stored; 23 MB):
https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf

TAH introduction: Pulitzer Center aiming, as of May 2020, to have reached 4,500 classrooms. Medill, 21 July 2020: “taught in more than 4,500 schools nationwide.”

## The other meter

`hnn-harris.html` — Leslie M. Harris, originally Politico, 6 March 2020
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248

> I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones… repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against with her fact-checker: that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America.

> I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.

> Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies.

## What this file does not do

It does not file “the 1619 landing did not happen” or “the founders were colour-blind saints.” It files “founding ideals were false” / Revolution-to-protect-slavery against the *Times*’s own fact-checker.