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washington: the ‘Blackest Name’ in America
By Jesse washington
AP national writer
G
eorge Washington’s name is insepa-
rable from America, and not only
from the nation’s history. It identi-
fies countless streets, buildings, mountains,
bridges, monuments, cities — and people.
In a puzzling twist, most of these people
are Black. The 2000 U.S. Census counted
163,036 people with the surname
Washington. Ninety percent of them were
African-American, a far higher Black per-
centage than for any other common name.
The story of how Washington became the
“Blackest name” begins with slavery and
takes a sharp turn after the Civil War, when
all Blacks were allowed the dignity of a sur-
name.
Even before Emancipation, many
enslaved Black people chose their own sur-
names to establish their identities.
Afterward, some historians theorize, large
numbers of Blacks chose the name
Washington in the process of
asserting their freedom.
Today there are Black
Washingtons, like this writer,
who are often identified as
African-American by people
they have never met. There
are White Washingtons who
are sometimes misidentified
and have felt discrimination.
There are Washingtons of
both races who view the name as a special
— if complicated — gift.
And there remains the presence of
George, born 279 years ago on Feb. 22,
whose complex relationship with slavery
echoes in the Blackness of his name today.
more through his marriage to a wealthy
widow, and purchased still more enslaved
Blacks to work the lands he aggressively
amassed. But over the decades, as he recog-
nized slavery’s contradiction with the free-
doms of the new nation, Washington grew
opposed to human bondage.
Yet “slaves were the basis of
his fortune,” and he would not
part with them, Chernow said in
an interview.
Washington was not a harsh
slaveowner by the standards of
the time. He provided good food
and medical care. He recog-
nized marriages and refused to
sell off individual family members. Later in
life he resolved not to purchase any more
Black people.
But he also worked his slaves quite hard,
and under difficult conditions. As president,
he shuttled them between his Philadelphia
residence and Virginia estate to evade a law
that freed any slave residing in
seeking to recover his slaves who escaped.”
In his final years on his Mount Vernon
plantation, Washington said that “nothing
but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate
the existence of our union.”
This led to extraordinary instructions in
It’s a myth that most enslaved Blacks
bore the last name of their owner.
Only a handful of George
Washington’s hundreds of slaves did
his will that all 124 of his slaves should be
freed after the death of his wife. The only
exception was the slave who was at his side
for the entire Revolutionary War, who was
freed immediately. Washington also ordered
that the younger Black people be educated
or taught a trade, and he provided a fund to
care for the sick or aged.
“This is a man who travels an
immense distance,” Chernow
said.
In contrast with other
Founding Fathers, Chernow
said, Washington’s will indi-
cates “that he did have a vision
of a future biracial society.”
Twelve American presidents
were slaveowners. Of the eight
presidents who owned slaves
while in office, Washington is the only one
who set all of them free.
Last names also could have been
plucked out of thin air ... ‘when the
teacher asked me what my full name
was, I calmly told him, ‘Booker
Washington’
George Washington’s great-grandfather,
John, arrived in Virginia from England in
1656. John married the daughter of a
wealthy man and eventually owned more
than 5,000 acres, according to the new biog-
raphy “Washington: A Life,” by Ron
Chernow.
Along with land, George inherited 10
human beings from his father. He gained
Still, historian Henry Wiencek says many
enslaved Blacks had surnames that went
unrecorded or were kept secret. Some chose
names as a mark of community identity, he
says, and that community could be the plan-
tation of a current or recent owner.
“Keep in mind that after the
Civil War, many of the big
planters continued to be
extremely powerful figures in
their regions, so there was an
advantage for a freed person
to keep a link to a leading
White family,” says Wiencek,
author of “An Imperfect God:
George Washington, His
Slaves, and the Creation of America.”
Sometimes Blacks used the surname of
the owner of their oldest known ancestor as
a way to maintain their identity. Melvin
Patrick Ely, a College of William and Mary
professor who studies the history of Blacks
in the South, says some West African cul-
tures placed high value on ancestral vil-
lages, and the American equivalent was the
plantation where one’s ancestors had toiled.
Last names also could have been plucked
out of thin air. Booker T. Washington, one
of the most famous Blacks of the post-slav-
ery period, apparently had two of those.
He was a boy when Emancipation freed
him from a Virginia plantation. After
enrolling in school, he noticed other chil-
dren had last names, while the only thing he
had ever been called was Booker.
“So, when the teacher asked me what my
full name was, I calmly told him, ‘Booker
Washington,’” he wrote in his autobiogra-
phy, “Up from Slavery.” Later in life, he
found out that his mother had named him
“Booker Taliaferro” at birth, so he added a
Pennsylvania for six months.
While in Philadelphia, Oney Judge,
Martha Washington’s maid, moved about
the city and met many free Blacks. Upon
learning Martha was planning one day to
give her to an ill-tempered granddaughter,
Judge disappeared.
According
to
Chernow’s
book,
Washington abused his presidential powers
and asked the Treasury Department to kid-
nap Judge from her new life in New
Hampshire. The plot was unsuccessful.
“Washington was leading this schizoid
life,” Chernow said in the interview. “In
theory and on paper he was opposed to slav-
ery, but he was still zealously tracking and
It’s a myth that most enslaved Blacks bore
the last name of their owner. Only a handful
of George Washington’s hundreds of slaves
did, for example, and he recorded most as
having just a first name, says Mary
Thompson, the historian at Mount Vernon.
See wASH on page 14
February 23, 2011 The Portland Skanner Page 13