In "George Washington's Mulatto Man - Who was Billy Lee", author James Thompson re-weaves a fabric of events that began more than twenty-five years before the Declaration of Independence was written and ended more than twenty-five years after its ratification. Most of these events are known only through passing comments, many of them George Washington's. Sketchy though the record is, it confirms that Washington had a unique relationship with the mulatto boy he bought in 1767 for 61.15. What made this relationship special is not in the written record. Mr. Thompson unravels the mystery in his new book. The tie that bound Washington to Billy Lee remained unbroken through the last three decades of Washington's life. In his will, Washington freed "my mulatto man Billy" and bestowed upon him a lifetime annuity. What force forged this unique bond? Mr. Thompson discovered it, he says, by stepping beyond the boundaries that have limited previous deliberations on this curious matter: George Washington and Billy Lee were more than master and slave. The written record says nothing of Billy Lee's parents apart from his being a mulatto. It shows, however, that George Washington knew Billy Lee's former owner. In fact, he knew all of Billy's former owners. The author contends that the future President also knew the boy's parents and that therein lay the reason he sailed to Cabin Creek, Westmoreland County, and purchased the seventeen year old maroon (and his brother) from his distant kinswoman, Mary Smith Ball Lee. Mr. Thompson completes his stunning commentary by unveiling a portrait of his subject. The picture was painted from life by one of the four artists who knew Billy Lee. Charles Willson Peale portrayed him where he always was, at his celebrated master's shoulder. Mr. Thompson's ingenious detective work shows readers how conspicuous facts become invisible when viewed through the wrong lens. His investigation confirms the qualities that made George Washington history's greatest man. It also changes our understanding about race in colonial America.

In "George Washington's Mulatto Man - Who was Billy Lee ?," author James Thompson re-weaves a fabric of events that began more than twenty-five years before the Declaration of Independence was written and ended more than twenty-five years after its ratification. Most of these events are known only through passing comments, many of them George Washington's. Sketchy though the record is, it confirms that Washington had a unique relationship with the mulatto boy he bought in 1767 for 61.15. What made this relationship special is not in the written record. Mr. Thompson unravels the mystery in his new book. The tie that bound Washington to Billy Lee remained unbroken through the last three decades of Washington's life. In his will, Washington freed "my mulatto man Billy" and bestowed upon him a lifetime annuity. What force forged this unique bond? Mr. Thompson discovered it, he says, by stepping beyond the boundaries that have limited previous deliberations on this curious matter: George Washington and Billy Lee were more than master and slave. The written record says nothing of Billy Lee's parents apart from his being a mulatto. It shows, however, that George Washington knew Billy Lee's former owner. In fact, he knew all of Billy's former owners. The author contends that the future President also knew the boy's parents and that therein lay the reason he sailed to Cabin Creek, Westmoreland County, and purchased the seventeen year old maroon (and his brother) from his distant kinswoman, Mary Smith Ball Lee. Mr. Thompson completes his stunning commentary by unveiling a portrait of his subject. The picture was painted from life by one of the four artists who knew Billy Lee. Charles Willson Peale portrayed him where he always was, at his celebrated master's shoulder. Mr. Thompson's ingenious detective work shows readers how conspicuous facts become invisible when viewed through the wrong lens. His investigation confirms the qualities that made George Washington history's greatest man. It also changes our understanding about race in colonial America.

THE FIRST PRESIDENT Documented national history states that the nation's first president had no children. But the oral history of the descendants of this African American family tells a different story. THE CONTROVERSY Many people will believe the story of George Washington fathering a slave son. Others will find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Washington had an intimate relationship with a slave named Venus. Their fateful union during the era of antebellum slavery produced a son, West Ford. THE SECRET As time and space distanced the Ford family from its beginnings at Mount Vernon, each generation continued to walk a precarious line, bearing the weight of their heritage and battling issues of skin color, status, and identity. Linda Allen Bryant, a descendant of West Ford, pens her family's narrative history in I Cannot Tell a Lie. Their genealogy is rich in adventure, love, tragedy, sacrifice and courage-a story that will haunt you long after you turn the last page.

A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. “A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time.

An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil. Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true. George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

Based on an extraordinary true story, this young adult novel follows of one young enslaved woman’s struggle to take what is rightfully hers. When I was four and my daddy left, I cried, but I understood. He had become part of the Gone. Oney Judge is a slave. But on the plantation of Mount Vernon, the beautiful home of George and Martha Washington, she is not called a slave. She is referred to as a servant, and a house servant at that—a position of influence and respect. When she rises to the position of personal servant to Martha Washington, her status among the household staff—black or white—is second to none. She is Lady Washington’s closest confidante and for all intents and purposes, a member of the family…or so she thinks. Slowly, Oney’s perception of her life with the Washingtons begins to crack as she realizes the truth: No matter what it’s called, it’s still slavery and she’s still enslaved. Oney must make a choice. Does she stay where she is, comfortable, with this family that has loved her and nourished her and owned her since the day she was born? Or does she take her liberty—her life—into her own hands, and like her father, become one of the Gone?

“A brilliant work of US history.” —School Library Journal (starred review) “Gripping.” —BCCB (starred review) “Accessible…Necessary.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction, Never Caught is the eye-opening narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave, who risked everything for a better life—now available as a young reader’s edition! In this incredible narrative, Erica Armstrong Dunbar reveals a fascinating and heartbreaking behind-the-scenes look at the Washingtons when they were the First Family—and an in-depth look at their slave, Ona Judge, who dared to escape from one of the nation’s Founding Fathers. Born into a life of slavery, Ona Judge eventually grew up to be George and Martha Washington’s “favored” dower slave. When she was told that she was going to be given as a wedding gift to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Ona made the bold and brave decision to flee to the north, where she would be a fugitive. From her childhood, to her time with the Washingtons and living in the slave quarters, to her escape to New Hampshire, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, along with Kathleen Van Cleve, shares an intimate glimpse into the life of a little-known, but powerful figure in history, and her brave journey as she fled the most powerful couple in the country.

Because General Washington - the universally acknowledged hero of the Revolutionary War - in the postwar period uniquely combined the moral authority, personal prestige, and political power to influence significantly the course and the outcome of the slavery debate, his opinions on the subject of slaves and slavery are of crucial importance to understanding how racism succeeded in becoming an integral and official part of the national fabric during its formative stages.

Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. But all, through their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires, uniquely illuminate our shared experience. A generation of 20th-century Americans knew him as a gentle, stoop-shouldered old black man who loved plants and discovered more than a hundred uses for the humble peanut. George Washington Carver goes beyond the public image to chronicle the adventures of one of history's most inspiring and remarkable men. George Washington Carver was born a slave. After his mother was kidnapped during the Civil War, his former owners raised him as their own child. He was the first black graduate of Iowa State, and turned down a salary from Thomas Edison higher than the U.S. President to stay at the struggling Tuskegee Institute, where he taught and encouraged poor black students for nearly half a century. Carver was an award-winning painter and acclaimed botanist who saw God the Creator in all of nature. The more he learned about the world, the more convinced he was that everything in it was a gift from the Almighty, that all people were equal in His sight, and that the way to gain respect from his fellow man was not to demand it, but to earn it.