IN 1982 Dorothy Gilliam was walking down an overgrown path close to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s lovely house on the Potomac River in Virginia, when she glimpsed a flash of white stone. Drawing nearer, Ms Gilliam, then a columnist for the Washington Post, made out an inscription on the moss-grown slab: “In memory of the many faithful coloured servants of the Washington family buried at Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860. Their unidentified graves surround this spot”.
The memorial had been laid in 1929 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA), a heritage group that owns the estate, and since forgotten. An “eerie sense of isolation surrounds the place where an unknown number of Washington’s 317 slaves were buried”, Ms Gilliam wrote in a subsequent column, “and the long walk from the stately tomb of George Washington to this abandoned memorial seemed drenched with the tears of the slaves”. Her words jolted the MVLA into action. Within weeks it had constructed a decent footpath and signposts to guide visitors to the slab. The following year, a new memorial was unveiled: a grey, truncated column of granite, surrounded by a circular brick path, on the...Continue reading
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