Asked to help, Post readers sent searing evidence about dozens more enslavers in Congress

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/slaveowners-congress-post-readers-names/

No paywall
https://archive.fo/An7O3

When The Washington Post published the first list of members of Congress who were slaveowners last month, the article included a call to action: Help us complete the database.

Ruette Watson was among dozens of readers who responded with searing evidence of enslavement. The outpouring included wills handwritten in the 19th century; birth certificates of babies born into slavery on congressmen’s plantations; newspaper ads placed by senators or representatives seeking the return of Black people who fled captivity; letters and book excerpts and journal articles. And in the case of Watson, an oral history project focused on Black women that included a 1977 interview with her remarkable grandmother, Esther Mae Prentiss Scott.

Thanks to Watson and scores of other amateur and professional researchers — who emailed from as far away as China and France and ranged from high school students to presidential historians — The Post’s tally of slaveholders who once served in Congress has grown from 1,715 to 1,795.

More than half the men elected to Congress from 1789 to 1819 were slaveholders, the research showed. Readers helped The Post identify dozens more enslavers since the initial story published on Jan. 10.

The list of congressmen still left to research remains long as well — it shrank from 677 names to 587. In other words: You too can help.

*snip*

[lagomorph777]

1. Half of them are trying to bring us back to the slave era today.

[flying_wahini]

2. They do it with a steady supply of desperate illegals now.

Republicans have had several chances to fix our terrible track record and we just go backwards on everything with them (GOP).

[brush]

3. And they are why the filibuster was invented. It was used to...

so slave-holding state senators could maintain their power over not just enslaved people, but also over the non-slave-holding majority in the Senate.

And Manchin and Sinema, not to mention all the republicans in the Senate, won't budge on getting rid of the hateful anacronism that the filibuster is.

It's disgraceful. The Democrats should put this information on blast 24/7 to shame and pressure the two twin DINOs on their clinging to a non-Constitutional Senate rule invented by slave-holders.

[crickets]

4. Link to a fascinating story found in thread:

Escaping George Washington: Oney Judge's 'amazing story' of courage
https://www.phillyvoice.com/george-washington-oney-judge-slave-escape-philadelphia-womens-history-month/

Oney Judge was born into slavery several years before the American Revolution. Her mother, Betty Davis, served a seamstress for the Washingtons at their Mount Vernon plantation. Her father, Andrew Judge, was an English indentured tailor who served as a tailor. But because her mother was enslaved, Judge, by law, became a slave, too.

At age 10, she began serving as a personal maid to Martha Washington at the Virginia mansion. But when Washington became president in 1789, Judge lived with them in both New York City and Philadelphia.

The Washingtons believed they treated Judge as a daughter, Independence NPS historian Coxey Toogood said. Yet, they were set to give her to their granddaughter as a wedding present. [snip]

"The Washingtons were shocked that she would seek her freedom," Levin said. "They thought that she was treated well. They couldn't conceive that being given away as a wedding present didn't comport with treating somebody well. In their view, she was treated well and there had to be some other reason why she ran away."

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R