 |  |
Source: February 24, 2004
Date: February 24, 2004
Byline: ATAC
Date: February 24, 2004
Byline: ATAC
Oney Judge
The following flyer was prepared for the commemoration of Oney Judge, on Wednesday, 2/25 at 12:30 p.m. next to the Liberty Bell Center.FREE AT LAST,
FREE AT LAST,
THANK GOD ALMIGHTY,
SHE’S FREE AT LAST!
ONEY JUDGE ( -2/25/1848)
- Did you know that President George Washington held Africans in brutal bondage as slaves?
- Did you know that he even held some of them at America’s first “White House” right here in Philadelphia in the slave quarters, which was just a few feet from the main entrance to the new LIBERTY BELL Center?
- Did you know that one of those enslaved Africans was ONEY JUDGE who later escaped from George Washington’s Philadelphia “White House” around June 1796 and fled to New Hampshire?
- Did you know that George Washington repeatedly tried to recapture ONEY JUDGE to force her back into slavery?
- And did you know that ONEY JUDGE won her battle for freedom but federal law forced her to live as a fugitive for 52 years until her death -- which was her ultimate freedom -- exactly 156 years ago on FEBRUARY 25, 1848?
Position Paper of ATAC!
What ATAC Requires- ATAC (Avenging The Ancestors Coalition) requires a culturally dignified, historically complete, physically dramatic, and timely installed and/or timely presented commemorative project at the President’s House site, as well as other permanent memorializing acknowledgments -- with substantive and ongoing participation from the African American community -- to honor primarily the eight Africans who were brutally enslaved by President George Washington at America’s first “White House,” which is now where the new Liberty Bell Center is located. ATAC also requires the formal acknowledgment, permanent marking, and conspicuous highlighting of the slave quarters footprint, which is at the entrance to that center.
In addition to honoring those eight, the installation and other acknowledgments are to honor all Africans who contributed mightily to America. Moreover, ATAC requires that Independence National Historical Park (INHP) formally and assertively petition Congress for the total funding necessary for the entire project and acknowledgments. ATAC also requires that INHP incorporate into this project the fundamental story of the indigenous people (i.e., “Philadelphia’s” original inhabitants) as told by historians selected by the indigenous people themselves.
- ATAC is a broad based coalition of African historians, academics, civic organizations (including the NAACP), community activists, elected officials, religious leaders, media personalities, lawyers, businessmen/women, and other tax-paying voters who are the descendants of the victims of the greatest holocaust in the history of humankind. In addition, ATAC is the coalition that is spearheading an ongoing voluminous letter writing campaign and also is accumulating a vast amount of signatures in its continuing petition drive, totaling more than 10,000 (and increasing daily). ATAC is the coalition that held massive demonstrations on July 3, 2002 and July 3, 2003 and that provided substantial documentation to the Congressional Appropriations Committee, thereby helping to lead to the committee’s Interior Department $19 billion budget amendment calling for the “appropriate commemoration” of the aforementioned enslaved Africans. Moreover, ATAC is the coalition that has the active support of various Black (and other) elected officials throughout Pennsylvania.
- ATAC requires the commemorative project and other permanent memorializing acknowledgments as well as the slave quarters footprint marking because justice demands that. Justice demands that because our ancestors as forced laborers transformed America into the economic world power that it remains today, because our ancestors died for America in all of its wars, and because our ancestors had their culture, religion, language, families, homelands, lives, and even status as humans ruthlessly, violently, and viciously stripped from them for three centuries by America (and other European-initiated slave trading countries) in a manner that no other ethnic group has ever experienced in the entire history of humankind. ATAC also requires that project and other acknowledgments as well as the slave quarters footprint marking because they are an essential part of the truth of American history.
Interested in using a picture? Some text? click here.
To contact the webmaster, click here
Copyright ©2001-2010 by the Independence Hall Association, electronically publishing as ushistory.org.
The IHA is a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1942.
On the Internet since July 4, 1995.
