Every year when ‘President’s Day’ rolls around (which is really an excuse for people to have a three-day weekend and go to mattress sales), I light a candle and recite the names I know of those people who were held in slavery by U.S. presidents, and other ‘revered’ founders.
I pray for those whose names I will never know, as well.
The ugly history of kidnapping, enslavement, breeding farms, torture, disfigurement, rape, and the forced and coerced deportation of black human beings is personal for me, as a direct descendant of people held in bondage. In their name, I wanted to see Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam resign after photos surfaced from his medical school yearbook depicting students in blackface and KKK robes. I still do, and he has made things worse with his ill-informed “indentured servant” remarks.
From my perspective, enslavement should be personal for every person who lives here. It makes no difference when your folks arrived on these shores. I don’t give a damn if your ancestors never ‘owned’ a person.
This country was stolen from Indigenous people. That act was accompanied by genocide and ethnocide, and its wealth—in the North and the South—was built on the backs of black people. Many of the heads of state honored as founders and advocates for ‘liberty and justice for all’ owned human beings, gave them as gifts, sold them, and passed them on to their children. They don’t deserve any honors. Excoriation is their due.
Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU’s deputy legal director and director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality wrote an article titled “Five Truths About Black History.” He argues that “If we want to understand the state of race in America, we need to know our past—particularly the painful parts.”
America was founded on white supremacy
The nation’s founders believed in white supremacy, and they were not ashamed to say so.
The first slaves arrived here in 1619. Between 1619 and 1865, Virginia passed more than 130 slave statutes to regulate the ownership of Black people. A 1662 law made all children of enslaved mothers slaves, regardless of the father’s race or status, so that rape by white slave-masters couldn’t create a free child. A 1667 law codified that slaves who converted to Christianity were still slaves. A 1669 law allowed slaves to be killed for resisting authority.
...
Forty of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Under the Constitution, a slave was counted as three-fifths of a free person. Ten of the first 12 presidents owned slaves. This is who we were as the United States became a nation.
Let us begin with a look at George Washington’s slave list.
Editorial Note
The list of Mount Vernon slaves which GW drew up, probably some time in June 1799, included those slaves owned by him outright, those who were controlled by him as part of Martha Washington’s dowry, and a number who were rented by him in 1786 by contract with Mrs. Penelope French at the time he acquired her life rights to land that she owned on Dogue Run.
The slaves Washington owned in his own right came from several sources. He was left eleven slaves by his father’s will; a portion of his half brother Lawrence Washington’s slaves, about a dozen in all, were willed to him after the death of Lawrence’s infant daughter and his widow; and Washington purchased from time to time slaves for himself, mostly before the Revolution.
Washington also hired for varying periods of time individual slaves, usually skilled artisans, from neighbors and acquaintances. These do not appear on this slave list.
Only one other complete roll of the slaves at Mount Vernon has been found. In February 1786 Washington recorded in his diary all the Mount Vernon slaves, dower and personal, the farms on which they lived, and their jobs. The total at that time came to 216; it did not include Mrs. French’s slaves, the use of whom Washington acquired later in the year.
There are also in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress Washington’s lists of his tithables in Truro and Fairfax parishes (where Mount Vernon lies) for every year from 1760 through 1774. These have been printed in the Papers, Colonial Series. These lists name slaves living at Mount Vernon but do not include children under the age of sixteen and a few elderly slaves who were not tithed.
The details, listed so benignly, are actually quite chilling. Hannah, who is 14 years old, has a notation: “The slave list at NN claims she is ‘nearly at her full growth and a woman in appear[anc]e.’”
Sabine, aged 60, is described as “a good working woman, notwithstanding her age.”
I’ve read numerous descriptions of Washington being a “benevolent” owner. There’s no such thing. Other excuses include, “but, but, he freed them in his will.” Um … he got plenty use out of them while he was living.
Since I write something along these lines each year, I thought I’d repost sections of previous stories for those of you who missed them the first time around.
One of the most telling indictments against Washington was his obsession with recapturing Ona Judge, who escaped him in 1796.
Ona Judge Staines: The black woman who escaped from and outwitted George and Martha Washington
A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave who risked it all to escape the nation’s capital and reach freedom. When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital, after a brief stay in New York. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.
Ona wasn’t Washington’s only famous escapee. I wrote about Hercules, his chef, in
George Washington is not my 'Great White Father':
Thought to be a portrait of Hercules,
the enslaved chef of George Washington, who escaped (Gilbert Stuart)
In The "Black" Eye on George Washington's "White" House we get a chance to meet some of the faceless "well-treated" slaves owned by the president from the plantocracy. So well-treated that some of them took the opportunity to escape to freedom, though Washington tried to circumvent the fact that in Pennsylvania they were free.
We learn details about Christopher Sheels, whose escape plan was foiled. Hercules—Washington's renowned enslaved chef who escaped on the night of the president's 65th birthday celebration—did not escape from Philadelphia, as had often been reported.
A birthday shock from Washington's chef:
Contradictory to long-held beliefs, the chef did not flee from his vaunted position in Philadelphia at the end of Washington's second term. He had landed in distinctly less comfortable circumstances that miserable winter. Washington was on guard to prevent another escape during his final months in Philadelphia, where in the spring of 1796 Martha's maid, Oney Judge, had run away. So when he returned to the capitol that fall, Washington left Hercules in Virginia. Runaways from Washington's estate weren't uncommon, and though some managed to flee to the British during the Revolution, most failed, writes Wiencek. Four men escaped in 1761, only to be recaptured. A slave named Sam was caught several times trying to run away. One named Tom was caught and sent away in handcuffs to be sold in the West Indies. Hercules' literate contemporary Christopher was caught when a note to his wife detailing his escape plans was discovered.
Oney Judge proved Philadelphia was a risk. But back at Mount Vernon, surely, Hercules would be secure. The once-trusted chef, also noted for the fine silk clothes of his evening promenades in Philadelphia, suddenly found himself that November in the coarse linens and woolens of a field slave. Hercules was relegated to hard labor alongside others, digging clay for 100,000 bricks, spreading dung, grubbing bushes, and smashing stones into sand to coat the houses on the property, according to farm reports and a November memo from Washington to his farm manager. "That will Keep them," he wrote, "out of idleness and mischief."
When Hercules' son Richmond was then caught stealing money from an employee's saddlebags, Washington made his suspicions of a planned father-son escape clear in a letter: "This will make a watch, without its being suspected by, or intimated to them . . ."
By February, after several days of working in the damp chill, Hercules had had enough. Before dawn on Feb. 22, 1797, he launched his quest for freedom.
Hercules made a star appearance in a children’s book that thankfully was withdrawn after a public outcry.
Daily Kos blogger SemDem documented this truthless travesty in “Scholastic Publishes Children's Book on Washington's "Happy" Slaves.”
From the Scholastic Description:
A Birthday Cake for George Washington
Everyone is buzzing about the president's birthday! Especially George Washington's servants, who scurry around the kitchen preparing to make this the best celebration ever. Oh, how George Washington loves his cake! And, oh, how he depends on Hercules, his head chef, to make it for him. Hercules, a slave, takes great pride in baking the president's cake. But this year there is one problem — they are out of sugar.
And such is the life of a happy slave. That description is the premise for the zany adventures of Washington's chief slave, Hercules. The book strikes a joyful, child-like tone and is accompanied by many bright, colorful illustrations of Hercules smiling widely along with his happy children. Spoiler alert: Hercules finds what he needs and rushes back in time to bake the cake! Everyone then sings "Happy Birthday" to the delight of George and Martha. THE END.
So should you find any of that insulting? Hardly. The author, Ramin Ganeshram, argues that slaves were actually proud of their “status” positions and made use of the "perks" of those positions. She added: “In a modern sense, many of us don’t like to consider this, fearing that if we deviate from the narrative of constant-cruelty we diminish the horror of slavery.”
FINALLY. Someone willing to talk about the good aspects of slavery.
Librarian Edi Campbell wrote a scathing critique of the book, and described the actual conditions the slaves worked under—which weren’t as pleasant as depicted in the book. Washington’s slaves worked from sunrise to sunset in a very harsh environment.
Washington was succeeded by Thomas "All men are created equal" Jefferson, the president who owned more humans than any other. Before anyone comments and says “but, but, but … he was a man of his times,’ please read:
Thomas Jefferson, hypocrite. Robert 'Councillor' Carter, emancipator.
“I've grown weary of hearing Jefferson lauded for hypocritically stating that "all men are created equal" out of one side of his mouth, while buying, owning, selling humans, and siring children on his wife's enslaved half-sister.” A half-sister who was 16, and his slave, when he first impregnated her in Paris. He was 46.
“If this country needs to applaud and honor any of the early slave-owning historical figures from the days of the founding, my choice would be the man who was the contemporary of and antithesis to Jefferson—Robert Carter III, known also as "Councillor" Carter.” His story is told by Andrew Levy in The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves:
Robert Carter III, the grandson of Tidewater legend Robert “King” Carter, was born into the highest circles of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy. He was neighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peer to Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But on September 5, 1791, Carter severed his ties with this glamorous elite at the stroke of a pen. In a document he called his Deed of Gift, Carter declared his intent to set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Carter was not the only emancipator.
“There were a few other whites of high status who also emancipated blacks, but on a smaller scale. One was a relative of Jefferson.”
From Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War:
Thomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong. Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife. Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.
While doing my own family enslavement research in Loudoun County, Virginia, I ran across this information on President James Monroe, which I posted to AfriGeneas:
While digging through the Loudoun county will book - came across Jame's Monroe's will - for Oak Hill Plantation - a property he owned in Loudoun County VA.What is interesting is that the slaves mentioned have surnames.
22 Jan 1836
Negro man Natus Berryman 24y old, George Harris 55y old, Samuel Jackson 46y old, boy Anderson Harris 16y old, James Carr 63y old, Samuel Love 49y old, George William 50y old, Harry Short 36y old, Peter Maloney 72 y old, Zachariah Boot 45y old, Joseph Short 30y old, Jno. Harford (crippled) 25y old, Alfred Gantt 16y old, Ralph Gantt 14y old, Molly Jackson 65y old, Judy Gantt 36y old and her 5 children James (Catherine has fits) Henry, Edmund & Washington (crippled, Nancy Gantt 18y old & her infant child, Mema Baker 22y old & her 2 children Jno. & Sally, Nancy Harris 42y old & her 2 children Priscilla & Cornelia, George Harris 18y old crippled in the knee, Betsy Thompson 40y old too fat for any use, Solomon Green 45y old, Nancy Green 75y old, Scy Harris 60y old & Tamory derry 60y old (crippled).
Sale of May 1836 Samuel L GOURVERNAUR purchased all.
From Loudoun County Will Book Abstracts Books A-Z dec 1757 - Jun 1841
by Patricia Duncan
Willow Bend Books, Westminster Maryland 2000
At the time I knew very little about Monroe other than “The Monroe Doctrine,” and began to research him and his Oak Hill Plantation. Monroe was a slave’s nightmare, and a hero to the slavocracy.
President James Monroe: Enslavement or Exile for African-Americans
As he traveled from the nation's capital to his Virginia farm following the inauguration of his successor John Quincy Adams in March 1825, James Monroe felt a surge of satisfaction. When he would reach his Oak Hill plantation he would have then fulfilled his lifelong dream: the management of a massive slave plantation. Not even the office of the presidency, in Monroe's estimation, matched the satisfaction of his direct engagement with an agriculturally-based slave system. (Unger, 2009, 335)
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At the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Monroe was initially in favor of its ratification. However, upon returning home he was persuaded by his uncle, James Jones, and the prominent orator Patrick Henry, to become a strident anti-Federalist. Like many other opponents of the Constitution, Monroe cited the lack of a bill of rights in the document as the basis for his opposition (Unger, 78-79)
As governor Monroe was an explicit target of the slave revolt led by Gabriel in 1800. Tipped off, Monroe led the repressive effort that spread across at least five counties and victimized thousands of African-American slaves by assorted cruelties including torture and murder. With the successful black revolt in Santo Domingo in mind, Monroe had the militia set up a defensive ring around Richmond placing heavy guards around munitions and weapons stores. By the 7th of October, 1800 the executions began, 28 took place on that day alone. Crackdowns on the free black population began with a pass system instituted with an order to leave the city by sundown. Monroe described the 1800 revolt "unquestionably the most serious and formidable conspiracy we have ever known of the kind."
While he served as the governor of Virginia Monroe pushed for the transfer of government-owned land to landless white settlers while at the same time exploring the purchase new land in the far west as potential sites where rebellious slaves (or "free" blacks) could be exiled. In mid-June 1801 Monroe requested that Virginia's General Assembly petition President Jefferson to purchase lands in the west to allow "persons obnoxious to the laws or dangerous to the peace of society" to be "removed." The document read that "[T]his resolution was produced by the conspiracy of the slaves. . . . last year and is applicable to that description of persons only..." It maintained that it was a measure motivated by "humanity" in order "to provide an alternate mode of punishment for those . . . doomed to suffer death." During this period nervous slaveholders continued to engage in a vicious repression scourging slave quarters throughout the region.
Monroe's expectation was that the slave revolts would increase in number and severity over time. He reasoned that due to "the contrast in the condition of the free negroes and slaves, the growing sentiment of liberty existing in the minds of the latter, and the inadequacy of existing patrol laws." He complained that the "spirit of revolt has taken a deep hold of the minds of the slaves..." This gave rise to strategies to rid the emerging nation of free blacks leading to the creation of the American Colonization Society and the colony of Liberia. It was a strategy designed to perpetuate slavery by defusing the internal pressures against the system.
The whole issue of getting rid of black people by sending them somewhere, to Haiti, or South America, or Texas—even to parts of the African continent they had no ancestral connection to—is a discussion for a different story.
The plantations owned by former presidents are big tourist attractions, with thousands upon thousands of visitors each year. In response to recent protests, those places have made efforts to mention the enslaved. Archaeologists have excavated slave quarters.
Plaque at Monticello
“The operation of Monticello depended primarily on the labor of black slaves. In 1796 there were 110 African-Americans living on the 5,000 acre plantation. Almost half of them children…
Jefferson who considered slavery “an abominable crime” acquired most of his slaves by inheritance. He freed only two in his lifetime, and five in his will. The others were sold after his death to pay the debts of his estate.”
In recent years enslaved people’s stories have become a part of the Monticello tour experience. You might be surprised by some of the content on this website:
Jefferson knew slavery was the primary economic engine for the South. Jefferson directly profited from the labor of enslaved people on his four quarter farms and at his retreat home, Poplar Forest. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop that required a considerable enslaved labor force, and Jefferson was generally concerned about his profit. Additionally, the people themselves were profitable. In Virginia, unlike the Caribbean, enslaved women achieved fertility rates that allowed for a self-reproducing slave population. Planters could satisfy the demand for slave labor without having to import slaves from Africa. Many slaveowners, including Jefferson, understood that female slaves—and their future children—represented the best means to increase the value of his holdings, what he called “capital.” This would have been especially true after the abolishment of the slave trade in 1807 in America, which prohibited the importation of new enslaved people and thus increased the value of the people already living in bondage. "I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm," Jefferson remarked in 1820. "What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption." An enslaved couple, Minerva and Bagwell Granger, came close to fulfilling Jefferson's disturbing calculation; they had nine children between 1787 and 1810.
Did Jefferson buy and sell enslaved people?
Jefferson did buy and sell human beings. He purchased slaves occasionally, because of labor needs or to unite spouses. Despite his expressed "scruples" against selling slaves except "for delinquency, or on their own request," he sold more than 110 in his lifetime, mainly for financial reasons. Seventy-one people were sold from his Goochland and Bedford county plantations in three sales in the 1780s and 1790s. Chronic runaways and resisters like Sandy, James Hubbard, and Billy were almost invariably sold. At least three individuals (Mary Hemings Bell, Robert Hemings, and Brown Colbert) were sold at their own request. Jefferson also “gifted” eighty-five people to family members and to provide dowries for his sister and daughters. His record of slaves "alienated" from his ownership—whether by sale or gift—in the ten-year period from 1784 to 1794 listed 160 men, women, and children.
Changes that have been made at Mt. Vernon can be attributed to Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the Washington Post’s first black female reporter.
The spectre of slavery haunts George Washington’s house
IN 1982 Dorothy Gilliam was walking down an overgrown path close to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s lovely house on the Potomac River in Virginia, when she glimpsed a flash of white stone. Drawing nearer, Ms Gilliam, then a columnist for the Washington Post, made out an inscription on the moss-grown slab: “In memory of the many faithful coloured servants of the Washington family buried at Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860. Their unidentified graves surround this spot”.
The memorial had been laid in 1929 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA), a heritage group that owns the estate, and since forgotten. An “eerie sense of isolation surrounds the place where an unknown number of Washington’s 317 slaves were buried”, Ms Gilliam wrote in a subsequent column, “and the long walk from the stately tomb of George Washington to this abandoned memorial seemed drenched with the tears of the slaves”. Her words jolted the MVLA into action. Within weeks it had constructed a decent footpath and signposts to guide visitors to the slab. The following year, a new memorial was unveiled: a grey, truncated column of granite, surrounded by a circular brick path, on the bluff high above the Potomac River where slaves were buried; archaeologists, still gently investigating the site, think up to 150 bodies may lie there.
Gilliam’s article in the Post on February 6, 1982, simply titled “Remembrance,” spurred the change.
Far back in the woods of Mount Vernon, a lone stone monument marks the site where George Washington buried his slaves. It is a modest memorial, apparently too unimportant to be roped off or otherwise distinguished from the other parts of the property.
It seems not to matter that the hands of these men and women built the celebrated mansion that was Washington's home. It seems not to matter that these men and women provided the free labor on which the plantation operated. This absence of proper recognition is an atrocity that adds insult to the already deep moral injury of slavery.
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On a recent rainy Wednesday, I left Mount Vernon's brick and gravel walkways, the mansion and the outlying cottages, the brass markers and brick guard houses to wander far back into the woods and walk the path the slaves trod to bury their kin. I walked upon the surprisingly still red leaves that formed an incongruously colorful canopy atop the nameless bodies underneath --anonymous because the slaves were permitted burial only in unmarked graves. The burial site on the banks of the Potomac was surrounded by skeleton trees, black and leafless in the winter air.
I found the marker of Georgia marble, about 2 feet by 4 feet,and read its euphemistic inscription: "In Memory of the Many Faithful Colored Servants of the Washington Family Buried at Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860. Their Unidentified Graves Surround this Spot." An eerie sense of isolation surrounds the place where an unknown number of Washington's 317 slaves were buried, and the long walk from the stately tomb of George Washington to this abandoned memorial seemed drenched with the tears of the slaves.
Thank you Dorothy Gilliam.
What is the solution to the glorification of the founders and the erasure of the deep flaws in our history?
Changing the way enslavement is taught matters, and so does the content. The Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC) reported:
Only 8 percent of high school seniors surveyed could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. Most didn’t know an amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally ended slavery. Fewer than half (44 percent) correctly answered that slavery was legal in all colonies during the American Revolution.
While nearly all teachers (97 percent) surveyed agreed that teaching and learning about slavery are essential to understanding American history, there was a lack of deep coverage of the subject in the classroom, according to the report. More than half (58 percent) reported that they were dissatisfied with their textbooks, and 39 percent reported that their state offered little or no support for teaching about slavery.
Download the report.
A podcast you should listen to:
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries writes:
In the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers enumerated the lofty goals of their radical experiment in democracy; racial justice, however, was not included in that list. Instead, they embedded protections for slavery and the transatlantic slave trade into the founding document, guaranteeing inequality for generations to come. To achieve the noble aims of the nation’s architects, we the people have to eliminate racial injustice in the present. But we cannot do that until we come to terms with racial injustice in our past, beginning with slavery.
It is often said that slavery was our country’s original sin, but it is much more than that. Slavery is our country’s origin. It was responsible for the growth of the American colonies, transforming them from far-flung, forgotten outposts of the British Empire to glimmering jewels in the crown of England. And slavery was a driving power behind the new nation’s territorial expansion and industrial maturation, making the United States a powerful force in the Americas and beyond.
Slavery was also our country’s Achilles' heel, responsible for its near undoing. When the southern states seceded, they did so expressly to preserve slavery. So wholly dependent were white Southerners on the institution that they took up arms against their own to keep African Americans in bondage. They simply could not allow a world in which they did not have absolute authority to control black labor—and to regulate black behavior.
The central role that slavery played in the development of the United States is beyond dispute. And yet, we the people do not like to talk about slavery, or even think about it, much less teach it or learn it. The implications of doing so unnerve us. If the cornerstone of the Confederacy was slavery, then what does that say about those who revere the people who took up arms to keep African Americans in chains? If James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, could hold people in bondage his entire life, refusing to free a single soul even upon his death, then what does that say about our nation’s founders? About our nation itself?
Here are some of the key concepts they present.
Key Concepts
- Slavery, which was practiced by Europeans prior to their arrival in the Americas, was important to all of the colonial powers and existed in all of the European North American colonies.
- Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the economy across British North America and, later, the United States.
- Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860.
- “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.
- Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways.
- The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender.
- Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War.
- Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery.
- Enslaved and free people of African descent had a profound impact on American culture, producing leaders and literary, artistic and folk traditions that continue to influence the nation.
- By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.
If I had my druthers, I’d have every schoolchild in this country “adopt” an enslaved family and follow their history. There are now online databases that make it possible.
Among them are:
Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names
The Virginia Museum of History & Culture launched Unknown No Longer in 2011 to make accessible biographical details of enslaved Virginians from unpublished historical records in its collections.
Beginning in 2019, the unique content of Unknown No Longer will be hosted on the Virginia Untold portal operated by the Library of Virginia, providing users with access to an expanded collection of resources for researching African American history in Virginia.
Race and Slavery Petitions Project
The Race and Slavery Petitions Project offers data on race and slavery extracted from eighteenth and nineteenth-century documents and processed over a period of eighteen years. The Project contains detailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites. These data have been painstakingly extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, and from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others. Buried in these documents are the names and other data on roughly 80,000 individual slaves, 8,000 free people of color, and 62,000 whites, both slave owners and non-slave owners.
One of the inherent tragedies of slavery is the fact that the masses of black people often remain nameless in the historical record. The 1850 and 1860 United States Population Slave Censuses, for example, recorded the age, gender, color, and owner's name for approximately 7.2 million slaves, but failed to record the names of individual slaves.
Websites like AfriGeneas offer research assistance, and have a slave data collection.
Tomorrow, I will rise. I will light a candle. I will pour water to the ground in libation, and I will recite a list of names. First will be the names of my own enslaved ancestors, and then I will call out names randomly selected from George Washington’s list. I will start with the names of elders, and end with the names of children.
Robin …
Ruth …
Breechy …
London …
They deserve it more than he does.
