You know the story about George Washington and his confession to his father about chopping down a cherry tree? Historians agree that it’s a myth, or if you are feeling less charitable, a lie. The story was not introduced until 1806 in the fifth edition of a Washington biography by Mason Locke Weems, a minister and bookseller, who claimed he heard it from an anonymous family friend. No other mention of the incident can be found, but the story, which reflects so well on the moral character of our Founding Father, still echoes in our consciousness today.
A lesser known but undeniably real chapter in our history is that of Ona “Oney” Judge, a slave who belonged to Washington. She lived with him, at what is now 6th and Market streets, at the President’s House, which was home to Washington and then second president John Adams from 1790 to 1800 when the White House was built.
Judge was a seamstress, like her mother, and was the personal maid of Martha Washington. In 1797, she escaped from the President’s House and boarded a boat to New Hampshire, where she was free from being a slave, but still a fugitive.
The Washingtons were furious that she had run away. They tried to bring her back, placing an ad in the newspaper offering a $10 reward for her return. Washington, protective of his public image, had Frederick Kitt, the steward of the household, sign the ad. At any time she, and her subsequent children, could have been recaptured and reclaimed by the Washingtons.
Oney Judge lived 51 more years as a free woman. Though she endured much heartbreak — she outlived her husband and three children — she died a free woman.
Last Thursday, National Park Service employees pried loose the plaques at the slavery exhibit from the President’s House where Judge’s story, and the story of other slaves of our first president, were on display. The exhibit had been there since 2010, but it fell victim to the Trump administration’s goal to have only parts of our history on display.
Unfortunately, being patriotic in this country is complicated. Our history includes slavery and our profoundly cruel and barbarous treatment of Native Americans. We aspire to be the land of the free, so examining our roots causes cognitive dissonance. Yet there is no choice but to accept that cruelty is in our creation story. These are the facts.
The deluge of lies that comes from our highest office recalls this chilling quote from George Orwell’s character Winston Smith in “1984”:
“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past … Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.”
Past events do have objective existence, even if the president feels these markers about slavery “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Coming face to face with our country’s original sins means we need to address them; hiding them allows for the poisonous logic that guided the decision to withdraw funds meant for local environmental justice organizations like the Overbrook Environmental Education Center and Philly Thrive. But these groups, as Sarah Ruiz reports, persist in their efforts.
Washington’s successor Adams famously invoked a British proverb when he said, “Facts are stubborn things.” But so are lies. In the face of a fascist government trying to whitewash the past, we are tasked with keeping our history alive.
