Teachers' Union President defends use of controversial 1619 Project in schools and says it's 'a factual version of oppression in America'

 The president of a powerful national teachers union on Monday defended the use of the controversial 1619 Project in schools during a heated debate with Fox's Martha MacCallum. 

Randi Weingarten also denied that the piece of writing - first published in The New York Times - pushes the idea the United States is a racist country. 

Weingarten is the head of the American Federation of Teachers. She told Fox's MacCallum: 'I favor us teaching about 1776...I favor us teaching about 1619.'  

The 1619 Project - first published in 2019 to mark 400 years since the first enslaved Africans came to American shores - puts slavery at the center of the American narrative.  

A number of historians, both conservative and liberal, have knocked the project for putting ideology ahead of historical understanding.    

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Randi Weingarten, right, on Monday defended the use of the controversial 1619 Project in schools during a heated debate with Fox's Martha MacCallum, left

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Fox host MacCallum said the project pushes the idea 'that the reason for the revolution and the colonization was because people wanted to preserve slavery'.

She added: 'In fact, scholars say there's no evidence that colonists were motivated by that in coming to the United States. 

'So it would be wrong as a historian to want to teach them something that is not true, because that is the basis that sets up all of these other tenets that lead to teaching kids that we live in a systemically racist country.' 

But Weingarten hit back: 'I've had several conversations with Nikole Hannah-Jones and I have not arrived at the same conclusion from her work as you have.'

Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for the 2019 series. 

In response, MacCallum told Weingarten: 'That's not my conclusion. That's directly from their work.' 

Weingarten had said last week: 'All of a sudden you're hearing people...who are trying to ban the 1619 Project, because it is trying to…actually teach a factual version of oppression in America.'

On Monday MacCallum has asked if Weingarten supports teaching children 'that if they're white they belong to an oppressor class and if they're black they belong to a victim class.'

Weingarten said: 'I think we should be lifting up all ethnicities. I don’t think we should say one is an oppressor class and one is not an oppressor class. 

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The 1619 Project - first published to mark 400 years since the first enslaved Africans came to American shores - takes slavery and puts it in the center of the American narrative

'I am a big believer in celebrating diversity and actually looking at and helping look at people’s lived experience.'

Weingarten argued: 'From everything I can see and understand from the data that I see, 1619 was the year that the first slave boat came from Africa to the United States. 

'So that's a point in history that I think we should be teaching.'

But MacCallum hit back: 'That's a very simplistic take on it.' 

After Weingarten tried to steer the conversation away from the 1619 project to the network's coverage of the 2020 election MacCallum told her she was 'dodging' the issue.   

A group of 37  Republicans led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last week demanded that the U.S. Department of Education not teach the 1619 Project because it puts a 'divisive agenda' over accuracy. 

'This is a time to strengthen the teaching of civics and American history in our schools,' McConnell argued. 'Instead, your Proposed Priorities double down on divisive, radical, and historically-dubious buzzwords and propaganda.'  

McConnell wrote that the project has become 'infamous for putting ill-informed advocacy ahead of historical accuracy.' 

'Actual, trained, credentialed historians with diverse political views have debunked the project's many factual and historical errors, such as the bizarre and inaccurate notion that preserving slavery was a primary driver of the American Revolution,' the Kentucky Republican wrote.   

The Education Department isn't mandating the 1619 Project be taught in public school classrooms.

But it has proposed offering grants to schools that teach it and other educational materials that 'take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history.' 

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Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for the 2019 series

Former President Donald Trump was particularly angered by The 1619 Project, describing it as 'totally discredited' and part of the 'twisted web of lies' that has caught fire in American universities that teach American is a 'wicked and racist nation.'

He formed a '1776 Commission' in response to teach 'patriotism.'

It released a report this year before being scrapped by Biden. 

Princeton historian Sean Wilentz criticized the '1619 Project' in a letter sent to top Times editors and the publisher, The Atlantic reported in December 2019.

The letter, which was signed by other scholars James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes refers to 'matters of verifiable fact' that 'cannot be described as interpretation or 'framing''' and says the project reflected 'a displacement of historical understanding by ideology,' The Atlantic reported.