'Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon' by Scott E. Casper
BOOK REVIEW
The history of Mount Vernon as a national shrine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, told from the perspective of its African American employees.
JUST in time for Black History Month and Presidents Day comes "Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon," Scott E. Casper's well-researched and welcome attempt to flesh out yet another national moment that fails to include the participation of African Americans -- here, the efforts to preserve and protect the estate of George Washington.
The choice of Mount Vernon as backdrop for an all-too-common story of black marginalization has more ironies than usual; the home of America's first president and formative leader, Mount Vernon is a shrine that has functioned as a kind of stem cell for America itself -- the source of its beginning and all its noble possibilities. But it is also the source of some of America's foibles, starting with slavery. It is the space between the two that Casper explores, through the prism of black life at Mount Vernon.
It's a tough assignment. Casper must piece the prism together from many sources: newspapers, ledgers, court records, correspondence among the members of Mount Vernon's governing body. But the efforts pay off. His account is evenhanded and scrupulously detailed, yet always emotionally connected to the life of housekeeper Sarah Johnson (1844-1920) and dozens of other blacks, slave and free, who lived and worked at Mount Vernon for generations in virtual anonymity.
Casper is not as overtly indignant as, say, David Blight in his seminal book "Race and Reunion," which recounts how the cause of black freedom and a black narrative were buried after the Civil War. Yet Casper argues for that narrative on every page, revealing small but significant facts -- who moved in or moved on, who accepted what duties, who bought what land, who might be feeling hopeful or discouraged -- that have cumulative power. Mount Vernon was a far more complicated place for black residents than for whites, because it represented three fundamentals that blacks were constantly trying to establish: work, home and a sense of national pride.
George Washington's slaves were freed after his death in 1799, but not the slaves Martha had acquired during her first marriage. Other heirs brought their own slaves to Mount Vernon when Martha died. Some of the property was bought in 1859 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Assn., a prototype historical group, fractious but close-knit, that treated Mount Vernon's blacks better than the blacks living outside its gates, but hardly as equals.
