Who’s Afraid of Ona Judge? Donald Trump Is. (YouTube Video Transcript)

(00:00:00) Your YouTube transcript will appear here (00:00:01) A lot of people in organizations are (00:00:02) saying Trump can erase our history about (00:00:04) the slavery interpretation coming down (00:00:06) at the president's house in (00:00:07) Philadelphia. I get it. But there's (00:00:09) another point. The MAGART isn't saying (00:00:12) that history didn't happen. They're (00:00:14) saying it doesn't matter. It isn't their (00:00:16) history. In their eyes, the white (00:00:18) nationalist eyes of Steven Miller and (00:00:20) James Madison, it isn't American history (00:00:22) at all. So, they don't need you to (00:00:24) forget it. They just need to diminish (00:00:25) it, dismiss it, make it irrelevant to (00:00:28) the world they want to recreate. (00:00:30) We can shout, "You can't erase history." (00:00:33) But the right just shrugs. They agree. (00:00:35) They just don't care. (00:00:37) But they're wrong not to care. There's a (00:00:39) danger in their ignorance. Hey folks, (00:00:42) I'm Todd Sturmer. I'm a scholar of (00:00:44) American history at the University of (00:00:45) Southern Denmark's Center for American (00:00:47) Studies and the author of A Resistance: (00:00:49) History of the United States. The story (00:00:52) of enslaved people in the home of the (00:00:53) first president isn't just hard history. (00:00:56) It's not only valuable because it's (00:00:58) painful or because representation (00:00:59) matters. Although those things are true. (00:01:02) It's valuable because it disrupts. And (00:01:04) that distinction matters. We've been on (00:01:07) this runaway train for more than a year (00:01:09) now. Remember the executive order (00:01:11) restoring truth and sanity to American (00:01:14) history. The one that directs agencies (00:01:16) to remove materials that inappropriately (00:01:18) disparage Americans past their living. (00:01:21) Now, the Heritage Foundation is grading (00:01:22) historic sites on their patriotic (00:01:24) compliance in line with the principles (00:01:26) of project 2025. This is restoring a (00:01:29) white nationalist history narrative (00:01:31) place by place, sign by sign, website by (00:01:34) website, ready for the 250th (00:01:36) celebration. So, Marshia P. Johnson's (00:01:39) National Park Service page now says she (00:01:41) fought for gay and rights. That's what's (00:01:44) left when you strip the word transgender (00:01:46) out of a sentence and don't bother (00:01:48) reading what remains. (00:01:50) At Stonewall, a site that exists because (00:01:52) people saw oppression in front of them (00:01:54) and fought back. They edited out the (00:01:56) people who did the swinging. (00:01:58) At Little Bigghorn, an exhibit was (00:02:00) flagged for saying boarding schools (00:02:02) violently erased indigenous identities. (00:02:05) At Sand Creek and Amachi, a massacre (00:02:07) site and an incarceration camp, they (00:02:09) posted signs asking visitors to report (00:02:11) anything negative about past or living (00:02:14) Americans. at a massacre site, at an (00:02:17) incarceration camp, asking you to flag (00:02:20) gun unfairness to the people who did it. (00:02:25) No, they can't erase that history. But (00:02:27) what else is it doing? That's what I (00:02:29) always try to think about with anything (00:02:30) in public history. What's the function? (00:02:32) What's the consequence? The driving a (00:02:34) kind of history underground, which given (00:02:37) that the president's house was a (00:02:38) designated national underground railroad (00:02:40) network to freedom site, tells you (00:02:41) everything about how little they (00:02:43) understand what they're handling. Every (00:02:45) one of those sites documents the same (00:02:47) thing. (00:02:49) Ona Judge was 21 years old in 1796. (00:02:51) Martha Washington claimed to own her and (00:02:53) wanted to give owner to her (00:02:54) granddaughter as a wedding gift like a (00:02:56) set of china. But Ona knew the (00:02:58) granddaughter and as awful as Martha was (00:03:00) knew the granddaughter was a nightmare. (00:03:02) So one evening when the Washingtons were (00:03:04) at dinner, Ona bailed. Philadelphia's (00:03:06) free black community, particularly its (00:03:08) churches, got her away and onto a ship. (00:03:10) She made it through New York to Boston (00:03:12) and then to New Hampshire. And at every (00:03:14) point because of the Fugitive Slave Act (00:03:15) of 1793 signed by George Washington, (00:03:18) every hand that helped her was a crime (00:03:21) of defiance, of refusal, a collective (00:03:24) action. (00:03:25) Washington, in the best Trump move, told (00:03:28) the Secretary of the Treasury to help (00:03:29) him get his property back, reach through (00:03:31) the Treasury Department to its officers (00:03:33) to themselves break the law, kidnap her, (00:03:36) and put ownership back to Virginia. the (00:03:38) president of the United States using (00:03:39) federal officials for his personal lens. (00:03:41) Huh. And he tried more than once, but it (00:03:44) didn't work. Black and white, people (00:03:46) joined together to help make her courage (00:03:48) matter, putting themselves on the line (00:03:50) between the white nationalist running (00:03:52) the show and what was right. Resisting. (00:03:55) Ona won. She lived free in New Hampshire (00:03:58) for the rest of her very long life. (00:04:00) Hercules Posie was paying attention. (00:04:02) Another enslaved person in that deeply (00:04:04) problematic household. He learned the (00:04:05) lesson. You can say no to grave men and (00:04:08) he walked away too. In the 1960s in New (00:04:11) York, the NYPD had been raiding gay bars (00:04:14) for years. Everyone took it. That was (00:04:16) the deal. But June 1969, probably (00:04:19) Stormmy Davier, someone decided the deal (00:04:21) was off. They fought the police that (00:04:23) night, the next night, the night after (00:04:25) that. People confronting, provoking, a (00:04:27) community having had enough. (00:04:30) the 1870s on the northern plains, the (00:04:32) Lakota, northern Cheyenne, and Arapjo (00:04:34) watching the Seventh Cavalry coming. (00:04:36) Treaties signed and broken, land stolen, (00:04:38) people disappeared, and on a June (00:04:39) afternoon in 1876, they struck back at (00:04:41) George Kuster and erased his command. (00:04:44) The United States spent 150 years trying (00:04:46) to turn that into a noble, heroic last (00:04:48) stand. Because the real story, (00:04:49) indigenous community standing up against (00:04:51) the worst kind of abuse of authority and (00:04:53) destroying it, isn't one that the (00:04:55) Magarite can absorb. same thing every (00:04:58) time. Not suffering, not endurance, (00:05:01) denial, refusal, and then action by (00:05:03) communities, by people banding together (00:05:05) in collective action in exercising their (00:05:08) right of resistance. That's what they're (00:05:10) dismantling. That's what's being done. (00:05:12) That's the work. Not the record that bad (00:05:14) things happened. They'll give you that (00:05:16) in the abstract at a safe distance. It's (00:05:18) the record of what people did about it. (00:05:21) The part where they fought back and it (00:05:22) worked. Because that part's usable. It's (00:05:25) a playbook. communities crossing lines (00:05:27) that are supposed to separate them, (00:05:28) race, class, law, to act together in (00:05:30) defense of what they believe is right. (00:05:32) For ONA, it took Philadelphia's black (00:05:34) churches, a ship's captain, a sitting (00:05:36) United States senator, people across (00:05:38) Northern New England, all committing (00:05:39) federal crimes to make Ona's courage go (00:05:42) as far as it could take her. People (00:05:44) defying authority when the authority is (00:05:46) the problem. Collective action that (00:05:48) doesn't wait 90 days to protest and (00:05:50) doesn't wait for Congress to fix things. (00:05:52) That's what Ona Judge's story actually (00:05:54) is. That's what all of these stories are (00:05:56) at all of these sites where they're (00:05:57) erasing this stuff. There are (00:05:58) instructions to resist. In the end, the (00:06:02) Trump regime isn't really trying to (00:06:03) erase the past. They're fine with (00:06:05) converting it into a footnote. Footnotes (00:06:08) don't threaten power, but Ona Judge (00:06:10) does. Learn more about her story. Eka (00:06:12) Armstrong Dunore is wonderful. Never (00:06:14) caught the Washington's relentless (00:06:15) pursuit of their runaway slave. On a (00:06:17) judge is the best place to start. But if (00:06:20) you're on the ground in Philadelphia, (00:06:21) don't miss the work of Black Journeys, (00:06:23) who will take you into Ona's experience, (00:06:25) which could be yours. And that's pretty (00:06:26) much what they're afraid of.