Of Many Strands and The 1701 Project

In June 2020, members of The Yale Historical Review (YHR) founded The 1701 Project, an initiative on racial injustice and social change. Although unrelated, we draw inspiration from Nikole Hannah-Jones and her colleagues’ examination of slavery’s legacies in The 1619 Project. The 1701 Project (a nod to the year of Yale’s founding) analyzes our university’s and our nation’s racist histories through an ongoing series of articles, interviews, and art. We have extended this conversation beyond New Haven, partnering with publications from other institutions across the country. This coalition, titled Of Many Strands (the name borrowed from the epilogue of Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man), has to create a central online repository for our journals. The 1701 Project and Of Many Strands seek to foster dialogue about our history in order to change our society today.