Hi everyone, I'm a public historian, writer, and the author of Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory, which comes out tomorrow (April 7)!. The book explores Americans' centuries-long struggle to reckon with George Washington's involvement in slavery. I trace how generations of Americans—abolitionists, educators, politicians, descendants of people enslaved by Washington, museum professionals, and countless others—have each remembered, forgotten, and distorted Washington's history with slavery, wielding it in the political and cultural fights of their day.
The book provides an overview Washington's history with slavery, then explores how different eras made sense of Washington's status as both one of the nation's most prolific enslavers and the architect of one of its largest private emancipations. It looks at how that history was erased in the years after his death; what happened to the people Washington freed from slavery; how both proslavery and antislavery activists used it in their rhetoric; how both Black and White Americans marked Washington's 200th birthday in the 1930s; how Washington and slavery has been taught in American schools; and how museums and historic sites have evolved in their telling of this history.
It reveals how Americans have always viewed the past through the lens of their present circumstances and offers important context for today's controversies about the public interpretation of the history of slavery in the lead-up to our 250th anniversary.
So please, AMA about George Washington, slavery, and American public memory!
[link] [comments]