This is a dangerous topic and I ask for careful reading before replies.
In order for the US to have the economy it had, and still has, he's right: slavery was necessary.
This doesn't justify slavery, it condemns the economy. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/tom-cotton-slavery-necessary-evil-new-york-times-1619-project-school-curriculum

2. In order to have a top-down, highly stratified economy where a tiny minority of people owned a huge majority of productive resources, slavery was necessary.
One man, one family, could not farm or even look after thousands of acres under the plow.
Slaves had to.

3. When slavery "ended" it didn't end. It changed.
Telling slaves who had no home, no property, no tools, no land, no education, "You're free," was worth a little, but... Not much.
It converted most of them to "sharecroppers."
They couldn't be sold anymore. That was about it.

4. John Lewis was a sharecropper's son. So, 80 years ago, 70 years ago, 65 years ago, America still had an entire class, defined by race, who owned no property and lived almost entirely without any assets but their labor. They got to keep *part of* what they raised. That was it.

5. Same system. A tiny minority owned all the land, all the productive resources, and had no means to work all their land except forced labor.
How did they get that land? Was it evidence of their superior efforts and wisdom?
Not exactly.

6. Their grandparents and great-grandparents took the land at gunpoint from the society which rightfully owned it, all of it, in common. Killed the owners. Then they said, "Now that I've got all this land I needs me some slaves."
So: "Necessary evil."
The first evil required more

7. Racism today is a means to perpetuate the economic function of slavery in a system which does not admit it still requires slaves.
So: homeless people with jobs.
You're not "property," you just have to pretend to be if you want food or shelter.

8. Racism isn't a one-off. It isn't a fluke. In stratified, "civilized" societies worldwide, class economic strata tend to be hereditary. What's easier for maintaining permanent strata membership than color coded humans? You can tell at a glance who "belongs" on the bottom.

9. The term "wage slave" isn't hyperbole. It isn't inaccurate. As we see today, under our system, if you for some reason can't get wages, you cannot long obtain food or shelter.
No, they can't whip you. They're not supposed to rape you (although they often do.) They can't sell u.

10. So, to that extent, emancipation was an improvement. But -
You can't run America's traditional economy without slavery.
Maybe we need to reevaluate that.
Probably not, though.

11. The entire Republican Organization of the US is telling you today that human beings, Americans, have no fundamental right to eat, or to sleep indoors under a roof. They have to "earn" those "privileges" by spending almost all their waking hours laboring for others' benefit.

12. During slavery, the "owner" class had to provide for the "slave" class food, shelter, clothing, tools. Not much, not decent, but some.
Now they provide money. If they don't provide enough money to buy both food and shelter, well, tough. Sleep rough.

13. Just pondering.
--out