The opening of the Obama Center has brought Barack Obama back into the spotlight although he offers nothing new. He will be in the pocket of the oligarchy for the rest of his life, and that means he must continue to erase the history of Black people in order to stay in their good graces. Now he praises George Washington, the slaveholding genocidaire.
The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence once again raises the issue of the lies that were taught as historical fact and how those lies impact Black people to this day. The July 4th celebration is the commemoration of the founding of settler colonialism, genocide, and enslavement but it is also a legal holiday that brings time off from work, fireworks, travel, and traditions of family gatherings and social events. Black people partake in all of these activities while knowing that the “independence” that took place on July 4, 1776 was nothing of the sort for their ancestors.
We are all well aware that the men known as “founding fathers” such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, were slaveholders. The depth of their depravity is also well known. Thomas Jefferson fathered six children with Sally Hemmings, one of the enslaved people he held who was also his dead wife’s half-sister. Sally Hemmings first became pregnant by Jefferson when she was only 15-years old.
Anyone who attended school in the United States learned that George Washington married a woman named Martha. We were not taught that together they held more than 300 human beings between them and under terribly cruel conditions including taking teeth out of their mouths.
I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion [sic]." Every school child was taught that Washington had wooden teeth but not that some of the teeth in his mouth or in his dentures were taken from enslaved people. “. . . in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed ‘Negroes,’ presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth …
There is no comfort in knowing that people who had teeth extracted in the era before anesthesia were paid any amount of money at all. It is the height of understatement to say that such a transaction was an unequal one.
The cruelties inherent in the chattel slavery system were many and only those who are most devoted to white supremacy try to deny them. They ranged from extracted teeth, to whipping and other physical abuse, family separation, starvation, and sexual assaults, all endured under forced, unpaid labor.
Former president Barack Obama, who we are told is incredibly intelligent and well read, nonetheless felt compelled to give one famous slave holder a pass.
Obama’s endless promotion of the newly completed Obama Center included an MSNOW interview with Michele Norris. Like all presidents Obama is an errand boy for the oligarchy but he holds a special place for them, which is why he has to give puff piece interviews to the Democratic Party’s favorite network. Like other presidents he left the white house with the usual payoffs of book deals, speaking fees in the millions of dollars, and friends in high places who raised $850 million for a monument to his more effective evil and to the fake democracy that he personifies. The system must impress the gullible into believing that they have a stake in what presidents say and do when in fact the opposite is true.
One of the reasons that Obama is a president for life, that is to say one who is always useful to the ruling class, is his commitment to erasing Black people’s experiences and history. The very thing that made him so useful keeps the grift going and apparently on a personal level keeps him going too.
In discussing what he refers to as the contradictions of U.S. history, Obama felt compelled to once again throw Black people under the bus with a paean to George Washington.
It’s possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington and also acknowledge he was a slave holder and that does not negate his greatness. It simply acknowledges that there is a profound deep flaw in these founding fathers who were also geniuses and gave us these tools and which is true for all of us. It’s true of every president that we’re this mixed bag, we’ve got contradictions and embody the country’s contradictions.
The only truth he told was to say that he too is deeply flawed. After all, he brought slavery to Libya when he destroyed that state in 2011. Where does one begin in unpacking this nonsense? There is so much of it in just a few sentences. First, what was great about George Washington? He inherited his wealth of enslaved people when he was just a child. He grew richer when he married Martha Custis, a widow who held 300 people in her own right and in a trust left by her first husband. That human wealth proved to be problematic when George Washington became president when the nation’s capital was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law allowed enslaved people in the state for six months to petition for their freedom. Washington had a simple solution to this conundrum.
He rotated his enslaved servants between Philadelphia and his Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia so that none of them would reach the six month time limit. He discussed his problem in a series of letters with his secretary, Tobias Lear.
. . . for although I do not think they would be benefitted by the change, yet the idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist. At any rate it might, if they conceived they had a right to it, make them insolent in a State of Slavery. As all except Hercules and Paris are dower negroes, it behooves me to prevent the emancipation of them, otherwise I shall not only loose the use of them, but may have them to pay for. If upon taking good advice it is found expedient to send them back to Virginia, I wish to have it accomplished under the pretext that may deceive both them and the Public. . .
Slavery wasn’t Washington’s only sin. He made good on the Declaration of Independence lies about indigenous people in the colonists' phony claims made against King George III. “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
The accusation was indeed a confession and Washington himself used some of the same words in 1779 when he ordered an attack on the Iroquois confederacy.
The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.
Washington got exactly what he wanted, as General John Sullivan reported: “We have not left a single settlement or field of corn in the country of the Five Nations [sic], or is there even the appearance of an Indian on this side of the Niagara.” In all likelihood genocide of the indigenous nations wouldn’t negate Washington’s “greatness” in Obama’s eyes either.
It is interesting that as Obama spoke of absolving Washington of his crimes he became visibly more nervous, less sure of himself. He realized that his whitewashing of history would not go over well. He was correct. He was widely vilified even by Black people who usually defend him, and his effort at upholding the history of white supremacy didn’t find an audience with the right either.
A Fox News headline shrieked, “Obama takes new swipe at founding fathers ahead of America’s 250th birthday.” Other right wing media organizations joined in, such as Town Hall which also used the word smear to describe Obama’s praise. It was actually funny to see Obama, nine years after leaving office, still trying to curry favor with racist white people who will always hate him even if he says what they say.
Barack Obama will always be the hollow man, prostrating himself to powerful white people and endeavoring to stay in their good graces. He can’t do that without whitewashing quite a lot of history but that is his specialty. During his presidential campaign he famously said that Black people were, “90% of the way to equality.” As he always did so well, Glen Ford called out the lie in Black Agenda Report in 2007.
Barack Obama's mission is not to crumble the walls of a U.S. Jericho, but to ascend to the pinnacles of power, for its own sake. His campaign is fueled by mega-million dollars, and exceeds even his political twin, Hillary Clinton. The enthusiasm for Obama among the rich is rooted in a desire to once and for all dismiss the "Black Problem" - which requires a Black figurehead to accomplish. Obama is that man. He is a loyal and trusted vassal. That's why, during his entire term in the U.S. Senate, he has never stood up, has never confronted power, but has always sent the right signals to the rulers, and assuaged general white anxiety about ongoing, raging racism.
On July 4, 2026 the only way to remember that date in 1776 is to acknowledge that slaveholding colonists wrote a screed full of lies because of King George III’s Proclamation of 1763, which forbade land speculators like George Washington from expanding their territory beyond the Appalachian Mountains. They also feared that the British would abolish slavery. The Declaration of Independence is a lie written by greedy, corrupt, and racist people who waged a war in order to conquer a continent through terrible means.
Obama has proven once again that he has a kinship with them and with the very ideas that founded the United States. The flowery language used to lie to millions of people decade after decade must be ignored. In that interview Barack Obama told the truth about himself. He is a believer in – and an agent of – white supremacy.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.
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