George Washington

This past President’s Day, which granted many in America time off, honors the nation’s first president, George Washington. Washington’s political legacy is well-known, but not the fact that he used his office to keep slaves in bondage despite laws prohibiting it. In an 2017 piece in the New York Times, University of Delaware associate professor […]

Samuel “Sambo” Anderson was a slave owned by George Washington who remained loyal to the end. On February 20, 1845, Anderson died at the approximate age of 100. Anderson’s birth date, like many enslaved Africans, is not known. According to accounts and other lore, Anderson, who hailed from the region now known as Guinea, claimed […]

Oney “Ona” Judge, also known as Oney Judge Staines, gained fame as an escaped slave who avoided the search efforts of President George Washington. Much of Judge’s story became known shortly before her death via a pair of interviews and was a valuable resource to abolitionists. Born in 1773 at Virginia’s Mount Vernon estate to […]

San Francisco school board president set off a firestorm on social media for his proposal to rename George Washington H.S. He said no school should be named for slave holders.

San Francisco school board president set off a firestorm on social media for his proposal to rename George Washington H.S. He said no school should be named for slave holders.

Lil Wayne’s camp is defending his appearance in a Super Bowl ad in which he is seen cooking burgers for America’s first president George Washington – who famously owned slaves. The ad for Apartments.com features Jeff Goldblum and a gospel choir singing “Moving On Up,” the theme to “The Jeffersons,” as he is literally lifted […]

The announcement comes after Scholastic attempted to defend "A Birthday Cake For George Washington."

Following outrage, Scholastic has decided to pull its new picture book about George Washington that sentimentalized the practice of American slavery. A Birthday Cake for George Washington was released Jan. 5 and had been roundly criticized for its upbeat images and story of Washington’s cook, the slave Hercules and his daughter, Delia. Its withdrawal was […]