Historians like turning points.  Dates leap out as the moment when history shifted.  The elusive narrative of what America means is made easy when we can simplify our thinking to what happened in one specific year.  Of course, we don’t study history for the mere sake of remembering the past.  We study history for what it tells us about the present.  In other words, purpose comes before remembering.  Today we think of the year 1621 when the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest.  Despite the odds, they survived and proved that life in the harsh New World was sustainable. They were followed by others who came with the boldest of mission statements: “we shall be as a city upon a hill.”  America was destined to be exceptional.

Recently, another year has been spotlighted as the that one best explains our nation’s story.  1619 was the defining year that set America on its painful trajectory of white supremacy.  To make our present intelligible, so the argument goes, we must recognize how the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia was our “true founding.”  There is a mountain of intention behind the choice to lift this event out of obscurity, to argue that slavery explains all our history, and then not to feel very thankful to be an American.

 I agree that 1619 was a significant year in American history, but for a different reason.  It was a year of the “perfect storm” of American paradoxes.  In July of 1619, one month before the arrival of the slave ship, the first elected legislative assembly in North America was held in Jamestown, Virginia. We would become a slave nation that also offered more freedom to more people than had ever experienced it before.  Maybe God just loves absurdities.  Certainly, one narrative does not capture our national identity.

Because it is important to separate motivation from event, it is necessary to remember that there was no impulse or thought behind the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia.  It was a Portuguese ship that had been captured by pirates.  It was certainly not heading to Virginia, where there was no demand for enslaved workers.  Virginia landowners fulfilled the need for workers through a system of indentured servitude.  The ship was most likely heading farther south and was blown off course.  

There was a guiding principle, however, behind that other 1619 event: people have a right to govern themselves.  Slavery had been an integral part of every nation’s history.  Not so with self-government. This idea would take root and flourish in American soil.  It is important to understand the lingering impact of slavery in our country, but not at the expense of negating the fact that the United States would become the first nation to be founded not upon myth, conquest, or accident—as most others had before—but upon a demand for the protection of that fundamental right to self-government.

Something to be thankful for.