Slavery and anti-Black racism permeate every chapter of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Each of the eighteen long-form journalistic works focuses on tracing one facet of contemporary racism back to its source during plantation slavery. As these connections are drawn, the authors reveal the complex mechanisms by which Black oppression has been imposed and reinforced through time even as civil rights have appeared to move forward.

In the essay “Fear,” for example, Leslie and Michelle Alexander trace the origins of American policing back to their original racist roots: the “slave patrol,” a roving gang formed in 1704 and explicitly tasked with keeping enslaved Black people from organizing rebellions. In “Medicine,” Linda Villarosa outlines how modern mistreatment of Black medical patients is rooted in false slavery-era beliefs that Black people experience pain less severely than white people do. In “Traffic,” Kevin M. Kruse uses Atlanta’s traffic patterns and highway routes to explain how redlining and white flight left Black Americans behind in the city’s under-resourced urban core.

Each essay in the book draws a line as clearly as these examples, reinforcing the extent to which modern racism is descended from centuries-old racism and prejudice that has not been fully eradicated.

Throughout the book, many of the contributors reflect on the meaning of citizenship as a tool for establishing identity. Because many of the human rights legally conferred on Americans are granted by way of citizenship, the fight for Black citizenship in America can essentially be seen as the fight for Black humanity itself. Martha S. Jones mulls this dynamic in her essay, titled “Citizenship,” noting that the fight for Black citizenship is what enshrined citizenship by birthright as an American principle—one of the many moments, she notes, that Black liberation has precipitated increased rights for all Americans.

In “Capitalism,” Matthew Desmond, too, considers the role citizenship has played in Black history. The alternative to being “citizens” for Black people, he notes, was not just a lower-ranking “resident” status—when Black Americans were begging to be classified as citizens, the alternative for them was risking classification as “property.”

In her conclusion to the book, Nikole Hannah-Jones advocates strongly for financial reparations to be paid to the descendants of enslaved people. While this is not the only action that needs to be taken, she contends, it is the simplest way to correct one of the lasting vestiges of slavery: the wealth gap, which continues to inhibit Black Americans’ well-being as a direct result of ongoing systemic racism.

Matthew Desmond’s “Capitalism,” Trymaine Lee’s “Inheritance,” and several of the book’s other works highlight the many racist mechanisms by which these financial vestiges of slavery still prohibit Black Americans from achieving modern prosperity. History is peppered with examples of white American violence intentionally destroying Black wealth—the destruction of “Black Wall Street” during the Tulsa Race Massacre is one famous example, as is the murder of Elmore Bolling noted in Lee’s contribution to the book.

In their essays “Medicine” and “Healthcare,” Linda Villarosa and Jeneen Interlandi point out that the consequences of the wealth gap aren’t just financial, they are fatal: America’s healthcare system has continuously underserved Black Americans, leading to broadly worse health outcomes, higher mortality rates, and shorter life expectancy overall.

Reparations are not, Hannah-Jones is careful to point out, a panacea to nullify centuries of racial injustice. But they are a tangible, accessible way to paradigmatically shift its lasting legacy of material inequity.

As Hannah-Jones explains in the book’s preface, her initial goal in the creation of the 1619 Project was to fill the...