To the Editor:
At the Feb. 8 public hearing of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Confederate Memorials and Street Names, a speaker said that George Mason IV of Gunston Hall had decapitated four slaves and put their heads on display upon the chimneys of City Hall. The speaker did not indicate why this was done nor did he offer substantiation of this grisly claim which was out of character for the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Virginia’s first Constitution and who was the father of our nation’s Bill of Rights. Mason was an Alexandrian whose contributions to human rights were further recognized in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
With the assistance of a research librarian in the Special Collections section of the Queen Street library who found some relevant facts in a letter of George Washington to his friend John Posey in the Founders section of archives.com, I learned that some of Mason’s slaves were involved in a 1767 plot to poison overseers. The court found them guilty so they were sentenced to death on Dec. 31 of that year. This source did not indicate how many slaves were involved. Their heads were displayed on the chimneys of the courthouse. In accordance with a 1745 law, the Virginia legislature awarded Mason a sum in recompense for the loss of his property.
It is important to clarify the record to clear the slur on Mason’s good name and to establish that a mistaken impression circulating in some circles in this city is incorrect.
It is not clear why the speaker’s criticism of George Washington’s close friend Mason was relevant to the business of the Ad Hoc Group on Confederate memorials and street names. However, I noted at the end of the Feb. 8 meeting, a number of people in the back of the room who had not addressed the Ad Hoc Group complained that the city had done a poor job of presenting Black history and that problem needed correction. All of us need to be careful to present our history correctly, especially regarding little-known facts.
Ellen Latane Tabb
Alexandria