Behind the scenes

Banned Histories of Race in America

The first story I wanted to tell on here was about Ona Judge. If you’re unfamiliar, Ona Judge was an enslaved woman who escaped George Washington’s plantation when she was 23 years old. Washington spent the rest of his life trying to recapture her, but he never did. Ona died at 75, free.

There are a couple reasons I wanted to start out with her story. The first is because we just don’t hear enough stories about young, brave Black women, let alone a young, brave Black woman who takes on the most powerful family in the country and wins. The second is because hearing Ona’s story undoes all these popular myths around slavery. The idea that enslavers just didn’t know any better back then or that slavery was a perfectly acceptable thing at some point or that being enslaved wasn’t so bad? Ona’s story immediately obliterates all that.

So, I read as much as I could about Ona and Washington and the laws at the time. I tried to write something that built as much context as possible while also paying a loving tribute. It came out a little long, so I cut it in two and posted part one.

This is Thomas Mundy Peterson, the first Black person to cast a vote in an election under the 15th amendment. He doesn’t have anything to do with this article, but I thought you should know what he looks like.

I didn’t know what to expect. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t that sure about the whole idea of a newsletter, really. Deciding to write a research paper a week was a pretty big commitment. My dad always used to say, “The world doesn’t give you enough time for all the good things, don’t take it upon yourself to make room for the bad,” and I wasn’t sure which one this newsletter was going to be yet.

Then a reader posted a comment. My very first comment! And it was long—almost as long as the newsletter itself. But it wasn’t from a subscriber. It was just a random Substack user who’d somehow found my post. And, of course, he was a dipshit bigot troll. His comment had nothing to do with Ona or Washington or slavery. He was just trying to bait me with some old long-debunked racist statistics about Black people and crime and drugs and on and on. Very boring.

Of course, I wasn’t surprised at the presence of a troll on the internet. I just hadn’t expected him so soon. I didn’t want this space to be like other social media, where interaction is dependent on conflict. I wanted this to exist away from the dimwitted hunger of white supremacist book burners. Or, at the absolute very least, I didn’t want them to be first through the goddamn door.

I’m not going to lie. It was a pretty discouraging moment. But, there was also something compelling about it. Like a reminder. This guy gets to make up his reality and the world acknowledges it, succumbs to it. Sometimes even claps him on the back and celebrates it. History doesn’t matter. Math doesn’t even matter. There is no such thing as education, only a mock-competition in which he is allowed to win every time. The spoiling of the brat. But he’s why I’m writing these newsletters. They’re not for him, but they’re sure because of him.

By no means do I expect him to read these Banned Histories of Race in America and actually take them in. I don’t expect him to learn or shift his point of view. I don’t expect anything to click for him or for him to suddenly have an answer to a long-burning question.

But I really hope you do.

So, I went into the Substack settings and put the comment section on “paid subscribers only”. It wasn’t a perfect solution. In fact, it’s a pretty shitty one, but it’s a guarantee of a fool-free comment section and it has payed dividends so far.

So, that’s a little behind the scenes for you. We’ll be back to a regular Banned Histories of Race in America next week. Until then, thanks again for subscribing. It really does mean the world.