When I was researching in Fredericksburg I learned that Washington, Fielding Lewis, and other prominent Businessmen, opened a school for Mulatto children. The school was burned down by angry whites, and the idea scrapped. I have not researched it, but imagine there is some material floating around about the school and the incident. 

Anita 




-- Henry Wiencek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
With the TJ/Hemings issue in full conflagration again, I would like to roll
back to Jurretta Heckscher's eloquent post on GW.  She wrote: "I would argue
that Washington . . .  must be presumed to have believed almost inevitably
in white racial superiority. That was, quite simply, one of the bedrock
foundations of the world that made and sustained him--and if he broke
extensively with that belief in his own mind, as I at least would need to
see demonstrated by an unambiguous pronouncement."

He did break with that world by freeing his slaves and he did make a
"pronouncement" in his will, in which he not only freed his slaves but
specified that they be taught to read & write, be "brought up to some useful
occupation," and further ordered that no slave be transported out of
Virginia "under any pretence whatsoever."  This is my interpretation of that
pronouncement: Washington believed that blacks had a right to freedom; that
formerly enslaved blacks were quite amenable to education and training;
furthermore, he clearly believed that they had a claim to education and
decent work; finally, he seems to have believed that with education and
training the freed children of slaves could immediately take a fruitful and
productive place in Virginia society as free people because he emphatically
specified that no one should be exiled.  I don't think a racist of the 1790s
variety would write such a will.

Henry Wiencek

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