The "Black" Eye on George Washington's "White" House
September 11, 2005, updated October 21, 2010
Michael Coard, EsquireAvenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC)- http://avengingtheancestors.com
America the beautiful, upon close historical inspection, is not
really that beautiful after all. It has fundamental flaws, and one of
those flaws is the “
black” eye on George Washington’s “’
White’ House.” That “
black” eye is slavery.
From age eleven in 1743 until his death at sixty-seven in 1799,
Washington (and his wife Martha Washington) owned Africans and their
descendants as slaves. Although he personally cannot be held responsible
for the institution of slavery in America, he personally — as president
of the Constitutional Convention and president of the United States of
America — can be held responsible for condoning, hence encouraging,
slavery. He can be held so responsible because he enslaved Black human
beings and because he refused to use his considerable political power to
condemn slavery during his presidency of the convention and of the
country. (1)
Moreover, in addition to enslaving Blacks in the South, he also
enslaved them in the North. Though many Americans surely will find such
statements inflammatory and provocative, not one American factually can
deny them. The historical record is clear: the “father of this country,”
while selflessly supporting the liberty of whites, was selfishly
opposing the liberty of Blacks. And he did it even in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania at the President’s House, which the esteemed Chicago
Tribune referred to as America’s “first real ‘White House’,” the site
where this country’s preeminent symbol of freedom, the Liberty Bell, is
now located. (2) The exact address when Washington lived there was 190
High Street, which today is 526-530 Market Street. (3)
While there are persons who disagree with the meritorious contention
that Philadelphia is the home of America’s first real “White House” and
who quibble that it was in New York, New York or Washington, District
of Columbia (then known as the Federal City), those persons certainly
must concede the following three uncontestable facts as reported by this
writer (i.e., Michael Coard, Esquire). First, although George
Washington was sworn in as president in New York City in 1789, he lived
there in one house for only ten months and later in a second house for
only six months. But he lived in Philadelphia for more than six
years and did so in
one
house. Second, the federal Residence Act of 1790, which designated the
District of Columbia as the permanent national capital, designated
Philadelphia as the (first) temporary national capital where the
president officially would reside, as George Washington did from
November 1790 until March 1797. Third, Philadelphia was the first city
to house
more than one president. (4)
As an aside, it is interesting to note that during the War of 1812,
British troops on August 4, 1814 set aflame the District of Columbia
building formally known as the “President’s House.” Three years later,
structural and cosmetic renovations — including the application of white
paint to cover the burnt exterior of that building — were completed.
The use of that white paint led citizens, beginning in 1818, to start
referring informally to the building as the “White House.” As that name
gained in popularity and became commonplace during the next several
decades, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 made it official when he
had it, instead of the Executive Mansion, engraved on his stationery.
(5)
But the President’s House in Philadelphia predated all of this. This
house, a majestic domicile, also was known as the Robert Morris Mansion
because it was owned by Morris who leased it to Washington. Morris was a
wealthy Philadelphia resident who provided not only his house to
Washington but also substantial financial assistance to Washington’s
Revolutionary War efforts. As a result, his money helped to make America
free. The problem is that much of his money was earned from his
investment in the slave economy and some of it specifically from the
slave trade. In other words, his wealth, to a significant extent, was
blood money earned literally from the blood, sweat, and tears of
enslaved Africans and their enslaved descendants. This means that, were
it not for the vast profits accrued from slavery by Morris (as well as
other slave investors and traders), America, to this very day, could
have remained a colony of the British Empire. Accordingly, there can be
no dispute that black enslavement gave rise to white freedom.
In regard to the building that came to be known as the President’s
House, it must be noted that construction began in 1767 at the direction
of the widow of William L. Masters. This is historically pertinent
because not only was Masters the Mayor of Philadelphia in the 1750s (who
died in 1760), but he also was a wealthy slave owner whose estate’s
enslaved blacks were likely to have been the laborers who actually
helped to construct what would later serve as America’s first “White
House.” (6). Parenthetically, it is quite interesting that the building
subsequently housed none other than Benedict Arnold in 1778 when he was
an American general before his notorious betrayal. (7)
During Washington’s years in Philadelphia, some of the enslaved
African descendants that he owned lived inside the President’s House.
But others were lodged outside in slave quarters, which, in the worst
sort of infamous irony and historical hypocrisy, were located a mere
five feet from the very entrance to what is now the Liberty Bell Center
near the southeast corner of Sixth and Market Streets. This irony and
hypocrisy exist in that the Liberty Bell, originally called the State
House Bell, was adopted, beginning in the 1830s, by abolitionists as
their symbol. One of their first known public uses of the bell was as a
“frontispiece to an 1837 edition of
Liberty, published by the New York Anti-Slavery Society... [Also,] William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery publication
The Liberator
reprinted a Boston abolitionist pamphlet containing a poem about the
bell, entitled ‘The Liberty Bell,’ which represents the first documented
use of the name, the Liberty Bell.” (Parentheses added.) (8)
Evidence of the existence and location of slave quarters is found in
a 1785 map of the President’s House grounds that indicates the presence
of a smokehouse and an attached covered shed that was later likely
converted into slave quarters. This conclusion is based upon a 1790
letter from Washington’s chief secretary, Tobias Lear, to Washington
pointing out that “The Smoke House will be extended to the end of the
Stable, and two good rooms made it for the accomodation [sic] of the
Stablepeople.” The so-called “Stable people” included three enslaved
black stable workers, in particular Giles, Paris, and probably Austin.
(9) And, although these black men were human beings, they were forced to
live
outside in slave quarters while the Washington family dog, “Frisk,” lived in comfort
inside the President’s House. (10)
The President’s House is great, just as America today is great; but
the greatness of each came at a cost — a very expensive cost paid for by
enslaved Africans, enslaved African descendants, and the offspring of
those descendants. That cost was a direct and immediate result of the
transatlantic slave trade. Throughout world history, man’s inhumanity to
man has been horrific and has not limited itself to the victimization
of any single group. However, it has manifested itself at its absolute
worst in the victimization of enslaved Africans and their enslaved
descendants in the Americas and throughout Europe. As a result of that
enslavement, African men, women, and children, from 1619 through 1865
(and beyond), lost more than just their freedom. They also lost their
culture, their family, their language, their land, their religion, their
name, their human status, and often their sanity, their limbs, and even
their lives.
 |
| George Washington's Philadelphia Mansion |
Before making this country great, Africans and their descendants —
not just those who were enslaved but also those who were relatively
“free” — actually made this country possible. They made it possible by
volunteering five thousand of their bodies as armed soldiers and up to
approximately ten thousand in non-combat roles to help Washington secure
what was a nearly inconceivable victory in the Revolutionary War,
despite his initial refusal to accept the essential assistance of Blacks
as battlefield troops. (11) And those Africans and their descendants
made it possible by continuing to labor relentlessly without
compensation, without appreciation, and without respect from slave
owners, including those like Washington who served as delegates to the
convention that produced the 1787 Constitution. It was that very same
Constitution — created with Washington presiding — that not only
endorsed slavery but also promoted it in at least five specific clauses.
The first clause was Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, which defined
enslaved Blacks as subhuman, counting them as three-fifths of a total
human being for the purpose of representation in Congress. (Apologists
for this clause argue that it was a necessary compromise designed to
dilute the political power of strong slave-holding southern states.
However, that argument fails because the three-fifths clause was not a
true compromise in that it was not consistently applied since it did not
give enslaved Africans or their enslaved descendants three-fifths of
any wages, three-fifths of any land, three-fifths of any votes,
three-fifths of any rights, three-fifths of any freedom, etc.)
The second clause, similar in purpose to the first, was Article II,
Section 1, Clause 2, which established the Electoral College. In
combination with the three-fifths clause, this second clause gave white
southerners more influence than white northerners in presidential
elections.
The third clause was Article I, Section 8, Clause 15, which
guaranteed federal military aid, thus comforting and protecting the
South in case of slave rebellions.
The fourth clause was Article I, Section 9, Clause 1, which
continued the importation of Africans as slaves in America for at least
two more decades. Despite the fact that in 1808 Congress could act to
prohibit such importation, United States slave traders and slave masters
were not very concerned because by that time the enslaved black
population would be “domestically grown” instead of “internationally
shipped,” in other words, bred instead of imported. This new practice of
breeding black human beings to labor as machines until their death was
one engaged in by traders and masters across the country, including
those such as Washington himself. In fact, he “wanted teenaged slaves,
including girls with a long period of childbearing ahead of them.
Washington was growing laborers as if they were a crop, to make himself
self-sufficient as a slave owner.” (12)
The fifth clause was Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which
tightened the grip of slavery by requiring free states to return
escapees to slave states. To make matters worse, it was none other than
Washington who, in 1793 (presumably within the Philadelphia President’s
House), signed the Fugitive Slave Act that created an explicit legal
procedure for capturing escapees and for financially punishing black and
white persons who assisted them. Also, this new law forced free states
to be complicit with slave states by actively assisting in the
re-enslavement of escapees. (13)
(A sixth pro-slavery constitutional clause could be noted here along
with the other five as a kind of act of omission instead of an act of
commission. This is because the South made absolutely certain that the
embarrassing “slavery” or “slave” word was never to be written anywhere
in the Constitution. In fact, the closest that the South would come to
even allowing reference to be made to slavery or slaves was the
following euphemistic phrase found in the aforesaid 20 year extension of
slave importation clause, namely Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1: “The
migration or importation of
such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit...” (Italics added.)
It truthfully can be said that Washington was great. But his
greatness was as a patriot, a general, and a president. However, his
greatness was not as a man — that is, if greatness is measured by how a
man treats his fellow man or woman, even if he or she happens to be an
enslaved black man or an enslaved black woman. American schoolchildren
often were and are taught the myth of the great Washington who could
“not tell a lie” and the myth of him throwing a coin across the Potomac.
But they rarely, if ever, were or are taught the truth about the real
Washington and about what he did to his fellow men and women — i.e., his
fellow enslaved black men and women — in terms of their existence
generally or in terms of their food, clothing, and shelter specifically.
For example, in regard to clothing, very few students and very few
other Americans, for that matter, know that Washington had a habit of
being an unsanitary miser. This is proven by the fact that, at his Mount
Vernon, Virginia plantation, he issued “dirty,” “fouled,” and “manure”
soaked garments to enslaved Blacks because such garments were the least
expensive since they came from the cheapest fabric available, which was
the “stomach wool” of sheep. (14)
Similarly, many of those black
laborers had to resort to rummaging for coarse burlap bags to use as
outer wear because Washington refused to adequately clothe them. As one
leading Washington scholar discovered, Washington’s “slaves were
miserably clothed... [In fact, they] were so badly clothed that they
were stealing the wheat sacks made of the cheapest, roughest burlap to
repair their own clothes... Otherwise, [they] would go around in rags.”
(Parentheses added) (15)
George Washington's dentures were from African mouths.
Although Washington considered his enslaved black workers unworthy
of proper clothing (among other items), he certainly found their teeth
quite worthy, so much so that he replaced a number of
his unhealthy teeth with
their healthy teeth,
to his mouth
from
their mouths. While schoolchildren often were taught and sometimes
still are taught about his wooden teeth — a story based on myth, they
never were taught about his “slave” teeth — a story based on truth.
Notwithstanding that it was quite likely that a dentist from
Philadelphia made Washington’s first total set of normal dentures in
1789, the complete story is much more interesting or, better stated,
much more disturbing. Instead of (or in addition to) wooden teeth or
standard dentures, Washington had teeth that actually were “yanked from
the heads of his slaves and fitted into his dentures... [and also]
apparently had slaves’ teeth transplanted into his own jaw in 1784...”
(Parentheses added.) (16)
In regard to shelter, Washington’s treatment of his fellow men and
women was just as bad. Consistent with the aforementioned scholar’s
comment that Washington’s black workforce was “miserably housed... [in] a
very harsh place” (17) is the observation of Julian Niemcewicz, a
Polish poet who resided for two weeks in 1798 at Washington’s Mount
Vernon estate and who described the living conditions of many of the
enslaved population:
We entered some negroes’ huts, for their habitations cannot be
called houses. They are far more miserable than the poorest of the
cottages of our peasants. The husband and his wife sleep on a miserable
bed, the children on the floor. A very poor chimney, a little kitchen
furniture stands amid this misery — a teakettle and cups. A boy about
fifteen was lying on the floor with an attack of dreadful convulsions...
They receive a Washington’s treatment, or more precisely his
mistreatment, of his fellow men and women went beyond mere stinginess in
barely providing food, clothing, and shelter. It applied as well to his
disdain for the human worth of his enslaved black laborers as evidenced
by his reference to them as “a Species of Property,” very much as he
described animals like his dogs and horses. (19) As another Washington
authority noted, “Most of the slaves who worked his [i.e., Washington’s]
farms he treated as cattle and referred to only by their first names.”
(Parentheses added.) (20)
Many historians and others contend that Washington was simply a man
of his times and that as a result he could not and therefore did not
truly appreciate the error of his ways. But he could and he did. In
fact, as pointed out by an additional Washington biographer, “... it was
an inescapable presence that enveloped... [Washington’s] day-by-day
experience from the moment he walked out the front door of his mansion
until he returned from his midday ride around the farms.” (Parentheses
added.) (21) He could not escape slavery. Yet, because he knew it was
wrong, he preferred to turn a blind eye. As he wrote in a November 23,
1794 letter in reference to slavery, “... I do not like to think, much
less talk about it.” (22)
Not only did Washington obviously and constantly understand the
error of his ways, at times he also lied about it. Notwithstanding
clergyman Mason Locke Weems’s 1809 “Washington cannot tell a lie” story
(23), Washington did lie and did so, inter alia, regarding his continued
enslavement of black human beings. Consider, for example, his December
19, 1786 vow to never again purchase another slave. Despite that vow, he
later, at least once, accepted enslaved black people as partial payment
on a debt and again purchased them to serve as skilled craftsmen to
labor on final renovations at Mount Vernon. (24) Even if he had kept his
promise to never again purchase slaves, it would have been “A somewhat
hollow promise since, as... [Washington] himself acknowledged, he was
already
overstocked with ‘this species of property’.” (Parentheses and italics added.) (25)
 |
| George Washington on his Mt Vernon Plantation with a few of his many enslaved Africans. |
Whether before, during, or after Washington’s broken vows, the
enslaved Africans and enslaved African descendants at Mt. Vernon and
Philadelphia were nothing more to Washington than a mere “species of
property,” as he personally described them. As such, they all, including
those whom he brought to Philadelphia, were treated in a degrading,
demeaning, debasing, and dehumanizing manner. Despite the apparent
belief of many Americans that Washington’s enslaved black laborers at
the Philadelphia President’s House did not suffer too much, there is a
general response and a specific response.
The general response to that
erroneous belief is that slavery always causes dreadful suffering
because it is an inherent evil designed to break the spirit, confound
the mind, flail the flesh, imprison the body, and ultimately kill the
person. The specific response is that those nine brought to Philadelphia
suffered to such a profound extent that two of his ostensible favorites
— Hercules and Oney Judge — were compelled to escape while in
Philadelphia and at least two others — Richmond and Christopher Sheels —
evidently planned their escape not long after returning from
Philadelphia. Similarly, at Mount Vernon, seven others — namely Peros,
Jack, Neptune, Cupid, Sam, Bett, and Tom — also were compelled to
escape, although their freedom was short-lived. (26). (Seventeen others
escaped in 1781. But five were captured, and that happened in
Philadelphia. See footnote 33 below.)
When considering the issue of slavery, whether in connection with
Washington in Philadelphia or other slave owners throughout America, it
is essential to recognize that the so-called “slaves” were sentient
human beings,
not inanimate things.
They had personalities. They had aspirations.
They had thoughts. They had feelings. They had names and backgrounds.
And those names and backgrounds must be made known so that they, as real
human beings, are both humanized and personalized. Accordingly, and
because this article pertains specifically to Washington’s Philadelphia
“White House,” it will humanize and personalize the nine whom he brought
to the city (27), eight of them in 1790 and the ninth in 1796. These
nine, it must be noted, were not the only black human beings enslaved by
Washington and his wife who together either owned or had the lifetime
use of a total of 316 as listed in his official Mount Vernon records.
(28) The brief backgrounds of those persons, whom this writer
empathetically refers to as the “Noosed Nine,” are as follows in
alphabetical order by given names (since most did not have surnames):
Austin — Born between 1757-1759, he was approximately 32
years old when brought to Philadelphia and was about 15 years older than
his half sister Oney Judge. He was married to Charlotte, an enslaved
seamstress, with whom he had five children. He toiled as a waiter,
carriage footman, and probably stable worker who likely lived in slave
quarters with two additional transported enslaved black laborers, namely
Giles and Paris, and probably another person. He died on December 20,
1794 at around 36 years old in Harford, Maryland after a fall from a
horse while returning to Mt. Vernon.
Christopher Sheels — Born circa 1774 and later serving as
Washington’s sole “body servant,” he was approximately 16 years old when
brought to Philadelphia. He obviously was literate because, sometime in
or about September 1799 at Mount Vernon, an enslaved woman from another
plantation wrote him a note regarding an escape plan. Unfortunately,
that note was intercepted by Washington who foiled the plan.
Giles — Born around 1758, he was approximately 32 years old
and served as a carriage worker and driver when brought to Philadelphia,
where he apparently was housed in slave quarters with Austin, Paris,
and probably another person. He was returned to Mt. Vernon in 1791 after
being injured in an accident during Washington’s tour of the southern
states. Giles died sometime before 1799.
Hercules — Born in 1754, making him 36 years old when brought
to Philadelphia, he was Washington’s thoroughly impressive chief cook
who married Alice, an enslaved seamstress at Mount Vernon. Together,
they had three children, including Richmond. After Alice died in 1787,
Hercules alone raised those children and probably had a fourth child
later. Despite his renowned culinary talents and his “prominent” status
in the president’s household, Hercules knew that he was nothing more
than a mere
thing to Washington. That is why, on February 22,
1797 — which was Washington’s 65th birthday — he courageously escaped
from Washington’s cruel grasp while in Mt. Vernon (as first reported in
any newspaper by Craig LaBan in the Philadelphia Inquirer in a two part
article on February 21 and 22, 2010) and remained forever “free” at some
unknown location until some unknown death date.
Joe (Richardson) — Also known as “Postilion Joe,” he was born
probably in 1769 and married Sall, a Mount Vernon enslaved seamstress.
Together they had at least seven children. He was an approximately 26
year old presidential coach footman and stable worker when brought to
Philadelphia on or about on October 20, 1795, which was five years after
the other eight.
Moll — Born circa 1739, she was the nanny to Martha
Washington’s two youngest grandchildren (as well as to Martha’s children
from her first marriage) and was about 51 when brought to Philadelphia.
She was returned to Mount Vernon in 1797.
Oney Judge — Born around 1773 and the younger half sister of
Austin, she was a needlework expert and Martha’s personal servant. She
was likely 17 years old when brought to Philadelphia in November 1790.
After discovering that she was to be given as a wedding gift, meaning as
a mere
thing, by Martha to Martha’s eldest granddaughter, Oney
finally had enough and planned an escape with the active assistance of
Philadelphia’s large relatively free black population. She executed the
plan on May 21, 1796, going from Pennsylvania, then apparently through
New York, and ultimately settling in New Hampshire. Although Oney’s
escape was successful and permanent, it was not restful because
Washington, as a result of Martha, was nearly unyielding in trying to
track down and capture her. Despite Washington’s and Martha’s hounding,
Oney, the married mother of three children, lived as an otherwise
“free,” albeit fugitive, woman until her death at about age 75 in
Greenland, New Hampshire on February 25, 1848, nearly 50 years after
Washington’s 1799 and Martha’s 1802 respective deaths.
Paris — Born approximately 1774, he was a stable worker at
the Mt. Vernon plantation and later, when brought to Philadelphia around
the age of 16, likely was housed in slave quarters along with Austin,
Giles, and probably another person. After being taken back to Mt. Vernon
in June of 1791, he died there sometime around October, 1794.
Richmond — Born in 1776, he was the son of Hercules and Alice
and had two sisters and possibly a step sibling. After being brought to
Philadelphia at age 14, he was forced to do the “rough and dirty”
backbreaking labor of a scullion and also worked as a chimney sweep.
Three months before his father’s great escape, he apparently had his own
(albeit unsuccessful) escape plan.
Not only did Washington work feverishly to recapture his own
enslaved black laborers, he also worked just as hard, and did so in a
blatantly illegal manner, to make sure that they never would escape,
whether they used stealth or the law. Among the provisions of the
Gradual Abolition Act passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1780,
enslaved Africans and enslaved African descendants brought into the
commonwealth by slave-holders from other states could gain their freedom
if they remained in Pennsylvania for a period of six consecutive
months.
But Washington did not use legal technicalities to evade that
law; instead, he simply violated it as any common criminal would.
Initially, the aforesaid act had a technical loophole that permitted
out-of-state slave owners in Pennsylvania to rotate their human property
outside Pennsylvania so as to avoid the six month freedom requirement.
That loophole indicated that just one full day outside the state would
toll the six month period.
In other words, if an enslaved person on even
the last day of a six month period were taken a mere one inch over the
Pennsylvania state line for just one full day, the six month period
would have to be started anew, over and over again each time that person
was taken to any other state for any distance for at least one full
day.
However, eight years later in 1788, that act was amended with the
following language:
“No... slave... shall be removed out of this state... with the...
intention that such slave... shall be brought again into this state,
after the expiration of six months from the time of such slave... having
been first brought into this state... and if any person... shall...
carry... any such slave... out of this state, for any of the purposes
aforesaid, whereby such slave... would lose those benefits... which by
the laws... are secured to him or her... every... person (doing so)...
shall... forfeit and pay, for every such offence, the sum of
seventy-five pounds...” (Parentheses added.) (29)
But in violation of that amendment, Washington, with the advice of
his Attorney General, Edmond Randolph, nonetheless decided to rotate his
“slaves” without freeing them and even without informing them of the
liberating law in effect at the time. Proof of his maliciousness and
disingenuousness is found in his own April 12, 1791 letter to his chief
secretary wherein he wrote that “I wish to have it accomplished under
pretext that may
deceive both... [i.e., the slaves] and the Public.” (Italics and parentheses added.) (30)
Unfortunately, Washington’s chicanery in Pennsylvania paled in
comparison to his ultimate mistreatment of enslaved black human beings
throughout America. In addition to the misery he inflicted upon the nine
in Philadelphia, Washington caused grief for many other enslaved black
people. It was in Philadelphia that he aggressively and successfully
sought the return of all blacks who had fled to the British in response
to Lord Dunmore’s November 14, 1775 freedom proclamation, which offered
immediate emancipation to any black male who agreed to join the British
troops. (31) Most heinously, on February 12, 1793, Washington signed
into law the heart-wrenching Fugitive Slave Act. Imagine, for a moment,
that you are an enslaved black man, black woman, or black child. As such
you suffer the unimaginable horrors of captivity. Those horrors include
forced labor, flesh-gouging whippings, arbitrary auctions, tortuous
rapes or grisly castrations, lynching nightmares, and rampant
dehumanization. But then, one day, you escape to freedom, to the
“Promised Land.” You plan to work to buy the freedom of family and
friends.
You find a job. You get an education. However, if you are
anywhere in the United States or its territories from 1793 through 1847,
your freedom may well be short-lived because Washington signed into law
a document that can return you to slavery. Specifically, Section 3 of
that act reads:
That when a person held to labor in any of the United States, or...
the Territories... shall escape into any other part of the said States
or Territory, the person to whom such labor... may be due... is hereby
empowered to seize... such fugitive from labor... (based on) oral
testimony or affidavit... that the person so seized... doth... owe...
labor to the person claiming him or her..., which shall be sufficient
warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor to the State or
Territory from which he or she fled. (32)
In response to Lord Dunmore’s aforementioned 1775 freedom
proclamation, it is important to note that many enslaved blacks were
quite emboldened by the idea of finally being free and finally being
able to assert one’s self as any human being should be able to. In fact,
numerous newspapers at the time in several colonies reported the
following powerful, empowering, and emboldening incident that occurred
in Philadelphia immediately after that proclamation:
A white woman “was walking along a narrow sidewalk when she came
upon a black man who refused to step into the muddy street to let her
by. When she called him to task, the man replied ‘Stay, you damned white
bitch, till Lord Dunmore and his black regiment come, and then we will
see who is to take the wall’.”(33).
Washington’s historically documented wrongs, many of which were
perpetrated in Philadelphia, must be righted — to the extent that such
horrific wrongs ever can be righted.
Avenging The Ancestors Coalition
(ATAC), a broad-based coalition of African American historians,
academics, civic organizations, community activists, elected officials,
religious leaders, media personalities, lawyers, businessmen,
businesswomen, and other descendants of the victims of the Euro-American
slave trade, is demanding a right to those wrongs. ATAC has spearheaded
a voluminous letter-writing campaign and a petition drive, which has
garnered more than fifteen thousand signatures to date. Moreover, ATAC
held major demonstrations next to the site of America’s first “White
House” on July 3, 2002, July 3, 2003, July 3, 2004, and July 1, 2005 and
has provided substantial documentation to U.S. House Appropriations
Committee member Congressman Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania, who was
instrumental in securing an amendment to the Interior Department’s 2003
budget requiring the National Park Service to develop plans for the
President’s House site, including an “appropriate commemoration” of the
nine enslaved African descendants there. (34)
And, in August 2005,
primarily through the efforts of Congressman Fattah, $3.6 million in
federal funding was provided for the site and the commemoration. In
addition, ATAC in 2003 helped to secure $1.5 million from Mayor John
Street of Philadelphia toward the funding for the commemorative project,
which will be part of the overall $4.5 million President’s House plan.
Since at least September 1974, which was thirty-one years ago,
Independence National Historical Park (INHP) suppressed, hid, and denied
the complete truth about slavery at the Philadelphia President’s House.
It is high time, after three decades, that INHP finally commemorate at
least those nine forced to labor in American slavery. Although it
indisputably is true that white indentured servants also “labored” at
this President’s House, their situation cannot be compared in any way
whatsoever to the all-consuming plight of the enslaved black workers
there. To make such a comparison is worse than historically erroneous;
it is a racist insult.
While indentured servants had mere contractual
limitations on their freedom, enslaved black workers had no freedom
whatsoever. While indentured servants were (figuratively) locked into a
contract for a temporary period of work, enslaved black workers were
(literally) shackled into a lifetime — as well as a multigenerational
lifetime — sentence of non-stop work and often even death. The
difference between white indentured servants and black enslaved persons —
whose free labor as slaves benefited Washington and contributed to the
fledgling federal government (and continues to this day to contribute to
this country) — is obvious. And it also is obvious that the genuine
contributions to the functions of America’s federal government (and
America in general) by those nine enslaved black laborers must be
commemorated at the President’s House.
With the prodding of ATAC and others, INHP has agreed to a historic
commemoration. ATAC has been watching — i.e., keeping a “black eye” on —
and working on this President’s House slavery commemoration issue for
nearly four years. It is because of ATAC’s watching and especially its
working that it was able to help persuade INHP to go from “denying to
designing.”
For a very long time, INHP effectively denied the complete
truth about the presence of Washington’s enslaved black laborers in the
Philadelphia area and his slave quarters at the President’s House.
However, within the past few years, under the remarkably good faith
leadership and honest pragmatism of Mary Bomar, the former INHP
superintendent, INHP began seeking design plans to commemorate those
enslaved persons. And it was not altruism that led INHP recently to do
the right thing. Instead, it was ATAC and others that persuaded INHP, an
agency of the most powerful government on the planet, to go from
“denying to designing.”
For the design, ATAC seeks a culturally-dignified,
historically-complete, prominently-conspicuous, physically-dramatic,
formally-official, and timely-installed commemoration on the grounds of
the President’s House to honor, primarily, the nine enslaved African
descendants.
ATAC seeks that commemoration because justice demands it.
Justice demands it because ATAC’s ancestors, as forced laborers, had
their culture, family, language, land, religion, name, human status, and
often their sanity, limbs, and even lives stripped from them for three
centuries by America (and other European-initiated slave-trading
countries). Justice demands it because those ancestors died for America
in all of its wars. And justice demands it because those ancestors
transformed America into the economic world power that it remains today.
In other words, they made American liberty possible. Therefore, they
deserve an appropriate commemoration (and they deserve it, at the very
least, as a partial step toward complete reparations).
That, and only that, will begin to move toward the healing of the
catastrophic injury that was slavery. And, in particular, it will begin
to move toward the healing of the “
black eye” on George Washington’s “
White House.”
Michael Coard, Esquire
MichaelCoard@msn.com
Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC)
ATAC@avengingtheancestors.com
avengingtheancestors.com
215/552-8751
Acknowledgements
This article, just like the historically successful battle to
persuade INHP to agree to commemorate the Philadelphia “Noosed Nine,”
could not have been written without the spiritually motivated,
thoughtfully planned, effectively executed, and relentlessly pursued
constructive activism of the hundreds of ATAC members, the scholarly
insight of ATAC’s official and learned historian Dr. Shirley
Turpin-Parham, the meticulous probing of erudite and catalytic historian
Edward Lawler Jr. of the Independence Hall Association, the Afrocentric
guidance of ATAC founding member Dr. Edward Robinson, the cultural
illumination of preeminent African-based artifacts collector and author
Charles Blockson, and the black-conscious agitation of Generations
Unlimited. But most important, this article could not have been written
without the existence, the energy, the courage, the resiliency, the
foresight, and the aspirations of Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles,
Hercules, Joe (Richardson), Moll, Oney Judge, Paris, and Richmond and
the tens of millions of other enslaved Africans and enslaved African
descendants. Had they not sown struggle, we would not have reaped
freedom. This article is for them!
Notes
- Fritz Hirschfield, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia, MO, 1997), 172-78.
- Michael Kilian, “Plans Made To Mark The First ‘White House,’” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 2003, p. 12.
- Edward Lawler Jr., “The President’s House in Philadelphia: The
Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography 126 (2002): 7.
- For more information, see Lawler, “The President’s House in Philadelphia: The Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark,” 5-95.
- History Channel, “The Presidents,” January 20, 2005 (based upon
information from Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia 2005, World
Almanac Education Group as posted at www.historychannel.com and see also
www.wikinfo.org at the White House heading).
- This information was provided to this writer on March 24, 2007
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Gary Nash, a prominent scholar and
professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles.
- For more information, see Lawler, “The President’s House in Philadelphia: The Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark,” p. 1.
- For a detailed and complete history of the Liberty Bell/State House Bell, see ushistory.org/libertybell.
- Lawler, “The Slave Quarters,” ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves/slavequarters.htm.
- Lawler, “The President’s House in Philadelphia: The Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark,” p. 47.
- Philip Koslow, ed., The New York Public Library African American Desk Reference, (New York, 1999), 284.
- Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, (New York, 2003), 121.
- Wiencek, Imperfect God, 319. On slavery’s constitutional
connections, see also Dorothy Towhig, “’That Species of Property’:
Washington’s Role in the Controversy Over Slavery,” gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery quoted in Wiencek, 268 and Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York, 2000), 94, quoted in Wiencek, 382.
- Wiencek, Imperfect God, 108-09.
- Wiencek on WHYY, “Fresh Air,” November 10, 2003, hosted by Barbara Bogaev.
- Wiencek, Imperfect God, 112. See also Robert Darnton, George Washington’s False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (New York, 2003), ix-x, xiv-xv, 23.
- WHYY, “Fresh Air.” (See footnote 13 above.)
- Works Progress Administration in the State of Virginia, The Negro in Virginia (New York, 1940, 67-68, quoted by Julius Lester, To Be a Slave, (New York, 1968), 62-63.
- Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington, (New York, 2004), 45.
- Ellis, His Excellency, 46.
- Ellis, His Excellency, 256.
- George Washington to Alexander Spotswood, Nov. 23 1794 in The Writings Of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washington, DC, 1931-44), 34:47-48, cited by Ellis, His Excellency, 256).
- Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington, (1809; Armonk, NY 1996), 8-10.
- George Washington to John Francis Mercer, Dec. 19, 1786 in The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, VA, 1992-97), 4:464, cited by Ellis, His Excellency,
167. See also Washington to John Francis Mercer, Nov. 6, 1786, ibid.,
6:386 and Washington to Henry Lee Jr., Nov. 6, 1786, ibid., 5:10-11.
- Ellis, His Excellency, 167.
- Wiencek, Imperfect God, 99, 126, 131, 320.
- For a more comprehensive commentary regarding the “Slave Biographies,” see ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves.
Also, as noted therein, see the unpublished work of Mary V. Thompson,
Research Specialist of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. In addition,
as pointed out in numerous lectures by Dr. Shirley Turpin-Parham,
Official Historian of Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC), see Mark
J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage, (Hanover, 2004), 69.
- Ellis, His Excellency, 312.
- “An Act to Explain and Amend An Act for the Gradual Abolition
of Slavery” Section 2, Mar. 29, 1788, General Assembly of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Information regarding this amendment was
provided to this writer by Edward Lawler Jr. on July 13, 2006, which is
why it was inserted herein subsequent to this paper’s publication in
October 2005.
- George Washington to Tobias Lear, Apr. 12, 1791 in The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, 37:573-74, quoted in Wiencek, Imperfect God, 315-16. Italics added.
- Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 251, 254-58.
- Annals of Congress, 2d Cong., 2d sess., Feb. 12, 1793, 1414-15.
- Ray Raphael, A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York, 2002), p. 321 (and p. 331). The quote was originally published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, December 14, 1775. Also, it was cited in Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom By Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath
(New York, 1991), p. 77 and in Peter H. Wood, “’The Dream Deferred’:
Black Struggles on the Eve of White Independence” as part of an article
in Gary Y. Okihiro, ed., In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribean, and Afro-American History (Amherst, 1986), p. 177-8. (This footnote was added on April 5, 2008.)
- The House Appropriation Committee’s amendment is posted at ushistory.org/presidentshouse/controversy/houserpt.htm.
