The federal government has removed information at a Pennsylvania national park about the people enslaved by President George Washington. One of them was Ona Judge, a woman who escaped from slavery and found her way to New Hampshire in 1796, using the Underground Railroad.
The removal is part of President Trump’s effort to rewrite exhibits at national parks he says reflect negatively on the country.
In Portsmouth, the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire is planning to honor Judge with a mural on its building this spring.
NHPR’s Morning Edition host Rick Ganley spoke with JerriAnne Boggis, the heritage trail's Executive Director.
Transcript
This exhibit, which included information about Ona Judge, was dismantled from the President's House site in Philadelphia. What was your first reaction when you heard that references to her and other people enslaved by the Washingtons were removed?
Absolute disbelief. I think [the nation] had just finally started really looking at a truer history of the Founding Fathers and understanding our complex narrative. These interpretive placards were put up, and I thought, ‘We're heading in the right direction,’ and here we are taking them down to go back to that narrative, the mythology of who these men were — larger than God and not human at all, and erasing the whole story of enslavement.
I'd like to talk more about Ona Judge and her story, in particular. How did she escape from the Washingtons' home and end up in New Hampshire?
When Ona heard that she was to be given away as a gift to one of Martha Washington's nieces — she had always thought she was part of the family. But then that moment came, and she realized that she was not, that she was really, truly just property to be given away as a gift. And so she started planning her exit from the house to her own road to freedom.
Philadelphia had this gradual emancipation law that if you lived in the state for more than six months as an enslaved person, you could petition for your freedom. And what the Washingtons had done in order to get around that law was every six months they would cycle out their enslaved people so that none of them stayed there more than six months.
One of those days that they were cycling out the enslaved that were in Philadelphia, she slipped out. She just left during dinner and found her way to the abolitionists, the Underground Railroad community that was in Philadelphia, and waited till she could leave Philadelphia. She got on a ship to go to New York, and then from there she went on a schooner to Portsmouth. She was asked in a later year why she left the comfort of the presidential manor, and she said she would choose freedom any day over those comforts.
Did the Washingtons pursue her into New Hampshire? Do you know?
The president, George Washington — there's a book out called Never Caught which tells how many times he tried to get her back. There's a series of letters that were written to the harbormaster at the time, and it just shows first of all, he thought that she was lured away by some man and she was innocent. And so they had the bounty out for her. At one time, they sent the slave catchers out to get her. And then another time, they tried to trick her into getting on a boat to go back to the Washingtons. So there are at least three times we know, documented really well, of their pursuit of their property, because they did not believe that she could have decided to choose freedom.
President Trump says museums need to start talking about the country in a, quote, “fair manner, not in a woke manner or in a racist manner.” What do you think of how the president is framing this history?
History is history, and who gets to tell it once you know it, once you know the true story, we can't really put it back in the box. We can try to erase it. We can try to whitewash it. We can try to say, ‘It's woke history,’ but the truth still remains.
George Washington was one of the largest slaveholders that were some of the Founding Fathers. There [are] documents that proves that. Ona Marie Judge was enslaved by George and Martha Washington. So trying to spin a narrative on something that's not true and hide the truth only hurts the whole country because it creates a false narrative that we cannot heal from [history], that we can’t move forward from.
What do you see as the consequences of removing that information from the federal historical site itself? Why does it matter if that is removed from the actual site?
When the federal government has these placards on federal buildings, it's an acknowledgment of some of the wrongs that were done to people. Taking it away is then disregarding truth, disregarding the reality of the situation, any reason to fix it. And preferring one narrative over another excludes a whole bunch of stories, excludes a whole bunch of people.
We say in our narrative: America represents freedom. Her story is what we should be praising, should be honoring, should be lauding because it is that fight for freedom. In New Hampshire, Live free or Die, right? She would do anything to live free, and she did anything to have her freedom.
