One of my pet peeves is right wing revisionist history. One of the prevailing myths that I come across is how happy and a fulfilling life a slave led. To avoid a rant about people like David Barton, here is a humorous look at some crazy questions asked of a historical reenactor…
Actress and comedian Azie Mira Dungey used to work as a historical re-enactor at Mount Vernon. And 1- because George Washington’s old stomping grounds are staffed with people acting out roles they might have had during the George Washington days and 2- Dungey is black, she played the role of a slave named Lizzy Mae. Now, she’s made her experiences fielding actual stupid questions from actual stupid tourists into a video series that not only invites laughter, it encourages people to think a little harder about how we lionize the Founding Fathers as paragons of morality.
On her website, Ask a Slave, Dungey has a biography of her character, Lizzy Mae…
Lizzie Mae would have worked very long hours, starting at about 4 in the morning and leaving the mansion at about 9 at night. As a house servant, she had very little time to herself and family, and almost no privacy. Most of her day would have been spent cleaning bedrooms, building fires, sewing clothes for Mount Vernon workers, and tending the many guests that the Washingtons entertained. In one year, they had as many as 677 overnight guests.
Most people assume that working in the house was a position of privilege. While it may have seemed that way to the slave-owners, it is clear that the people themselves didn’t share that point of view. The majority of Mount Vernon runaways were house servants.
The second episode features a guest abolitionist, Tobias Lear… go look at it on her site.
I wonder what the correspondence would be between people who can speculate that slavery was benign and truly unrewarding or debasing jobs.
Even smart people are clueless about this. My father and his wife were gushing about all the beautiful homes in Charleston S.C. once and I commented what a shame it was all that wealth was based on the suffering and misery of so many people, and that was the end of all the gushing. lol