Speaking to the Dead

Dear President Washington,


As you may know, you are quite a legend in American history. You are known as the great general who united the Americans against the British in the Revolutionary War. You are the only president to ever receive an anonymous vote into the White House. However, I find an inconsistency in your beliefs that has manifested into a plague in my day and time. You fought against the British and kicked them out of America because you were claiming your rights as freemen. But, dear President, did not the people of different races cross your mind? What of their freedom? There is a famous picture of you leading your troops across a river in the dead of night before a fight that you won, but there was one Black man in your boat who also helped to defeat the British. He was your servant, your slave. He fought just as well as the next man, but at the end of the war he did not gain his freedom, he had fought valiantly for yours. Why is this, Washington? How could you sit by idle and allow your people to enslave another people right after you had just fought a war to gain your freedom from an imposing foreign government? That makes you and Americans hypocrits. You knew what it felt like to be under someone else's intense control yet you were satisfied to let slaves remain under your intense control of them. Now we Americans have forgotten what it feels like to be enslaved and we can not empathize with Black slaves. You should have stopped that inhumane practice when you had the chance before it had time to spread farther West. Your wife warned you. You should have listened to her because she was right. Some hold you in the highest respect; I can not. I respect you in some ways but the fact that you were able to keep slaves when you understood their plight is a blaring fault in your character that has cost the Black people of America much harm and unnecessary suffering.


Yours Sincerely and Blatantly,


Charlotte Forten Grimke