The Washington Post - 09.11.2019

A14 eZ sU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9 , 2019

When they reached the grave -

site, John paused and read the

inscription on Griffith’s head-

stone: “In memory of Thomas

Griffith. Born 15th of Sept. 1803,

Died 28th of Jan. 1870.” Engraved

above his name was a weeping

willow.

“The weeping willow means

they lived a good life,” Amanda

told t he Kings.

John said nothing.

frances said she hoped Griffith

treated h is enslaved people well.

“Since the slave quarters are so

close to the main house, we are

thinking they were interdepen-

dent o n each other and they would

have known each other well,”

frances said. “I am putting a 21st-

century positive spin on this, but I

hope that my ancestors were de-

cent e nough people.”

John thought a bout the b ravery

of his great-great-aunt Anne, who

told authorities that Griffith was

consorting with Confederates on

his property.

“The family’s participation in

the Confederacy,” he said later, “is

so telling about their desire to

defend the i nstitution of slavery.”

The Beckers led the Kings to a

forested area by the family swim-

ming pool. They stood along a

path and gazed at a patch of land.

This, the Beckers told them, is

where the enslaved Kings are

probably buried in unmarked

graves. oak and walnut trees dot-

ted the area, which was smoth-

ered below with brush, poison ivy

and wild rose h ips.

Growing up, Amanda told the

Kings, she’d play by herself along

the path and hold tea parties.

When she and her sister got older,

they’d venture into t he bushy area

and look f or headstones.

“Nobody ever stumbled on a

headstone?” melissa asked.

She tapped her neck with her

finger over and over, while John

rubbed his chin.

The Beckers said they’d been

told that their grandfather Vestus

Wilcox, a lieutenant commander

in the Navy, tossed the missing

headstones over a hill somewhere.

But they didn’t k now for s ure. T he

Kings asked, is it possible to con-

duct a search? Amanda said she

and her husband were exploring

the possibility of purchasing ra-

dar equipment.

“It’ll be detective work,” fran-

ces said. “We can find it.”

Before the Kings left, Amanda

fetched something from the

house. It was a copy of a slave

census frances had found, listing

the names and ages of the en-

slaved Kings.

Standing by the log cabin,

John’s oldest daughter, Amina, 15,

grabbed the paper, and everyone

huddled around her. She and her

sister, mireya, 13, were now scan-

ning the names. The youngest

Kings were looking at the names

of the oldest-known Kings, all en-

slaved.

Amina stopped at two of the

names: King, Anne f 15; King,

William m 13.

“Look,” Amina said to her s ister.

“They were the s ame age as us.”

[email protected]

be just fine.’ ”

They Googled the address and

made their way to Gaithersburg.

They found Griffith road and

then turned onto a long gravely

route that led to Edgehill.

The couple parked and saw the

two-story white farmhouse with

the greenish-blue shutters. The

log cabin loomed right over their

parking spot.

“It took a minute to grab my

breath,” Janis r ecalled.

Then, she approached the door

to the main house a nd knocked.

When frances heard the sound,

she thought it might b e the person

who’d responded to her Craigslist

ad hawking 50-gallon water bar-

rels.

“my name is Janis King robin-

son,” she told frances. “I’m really

sorry to interrupt your day, but

we’ve been recently i nformed that

our ancestors were enslaved here.”

frances was floored — and anx-

ious. She never expected to meet

the descendants of the people who

lived in the log c abin.

“Well,” frances told her visitor,

“come on in.”

As they toured the property,

frances kept referring to Janis’s

ancestors as “slaves,” t he piece of

land w here the enslaved w ere bur-

ied as “the slave cemetery,” and

the log cabin where the enslaved

slept as “the slave quarters.” Janis

told h er, “It’s important to say they

were ‘enslaved.’ ”

“I’m a work in progress,” fran-

ces told h er.

“She was as warm and inviting

as a human could be,” Janis re-

called later. “my visit there was

profoundly spiritual. I was doing

exactly as I was supposed to.”

‘They lived a good life’

Last month, John, his wife, me-

lissa Steel King, and their two

daughters walked slowly behind

the Beckers’ farmhouse. They

were on their way to the grave of

the man who’d enslaved their an-

cestors.

maryland State Archives full of

yellowed paper showing the tax

records of enslavers, listing names

of the enslaved and their mone-

tary values; the amount next to

Lydia’s name, for instance, was

$300 in 1853 and t hen, a couple of

years later, $600.

She also came across an article

by a local historian reporting that

John’s enslaved great-great-aunt

Anne King, then just 15, alerted

authorities that Griffith had en-

tertained a visit by a “nicely-

dressed stranger.” Thanks to her

tip, Griffith was arrested, charged

and prosecuted in a military trial

in Baltimore for “giving aid” t o a

“known rebel officer.” Griffith was

described in the article as a “one-

armed farmer.”

fi nally, in february, mcKay

emailed all of h er f indings to John.

“Wow!” John wrote back that

night. “This is amazing. my wife,

daughters, and I were all nearly

moved to tears by this informa-

tion. It is incredible to know this

history and fantastic to think we

can actually go see the property. I

cannot thank you enough for the

gift of this history.”

But what next? Cold-call the

Beckers? He d ecided to spread the

word a mong the other K ings first.

‘We don’t wait for permission’

When Janis King robinson, the

retired hospital executive in

North Carolina, got her cousin

John’s email, she knew she had to

see the farm in maryland as soon

as possible.

“Nobody in this family is shy,”

Janis said. “We don’t wait for per-

mission.”

She was already traveling to

Washington the next month to

visit the National museum of Afri-

can American History and Cul-

ture. After she was finished, she

figured, she’d make an impromp-

tu stop at E dgehill.

“my husband said, ‘Without

permission?’ ” Janis recalled,

laughing. “I said, ‘We’re going to

feel bad that he did it. I’d like to

think positively that he didn’t hurt

the slaves.”

The Kings have had to gently

nudge the B eckers to refer t o their

ancestors as “enslaved people”

rather than “slaves,” so that they

are not defined by a dehumaniz-

ing label. They were also troubled

by the old furniture and farm

supplies stored in the log cabin.

(The Beckers cleaned everything

out after t he Kings’ first visit.)

“But Amanda and frances have

been really eager to learn through

this process,” John said. “Having

taught high school social studies

and having spent my l ife in educa-

tion, I thought about how illustra-

tive this experience is of our need

to do a better job of teaching in

this country about the history of

African Americans and the insti-

tution of slavery.”

‘The gift of this history’

John King w as in his first year a s

education secretary when he got a

call in 2016 from the University of

maryland Eastern Shore. The his-

torically black college said it had

discovered t hat his paternal grand-

mother, Estelle King, graduated

from the school’s predecessor in

1894, before becoming a nurse.

Would he want to give a speech at

the school? S ure, he said.

The call prompted a dive into

his family’s past. Last year, he

enlisted the help of Christine mc-

Kay, a retired archivist from the

Schomburg Center for research

in Black Culture who had once

discovered obama’s father’s let-

ters, some of which he’d written

from Kenya imploring universi-

ties in the United States for finan-

cial aid.

mcKay wanted to know every-

thing about the Kings. She started

with John’s great-great-grand-

mother, Lydia King, who was born

about 1822. She combed the re-

cords of the freedman’s Bank —

established after the Civil War for

freed people — and found two of

her accounts, suggesting she’d

probably been enslaved. The re-

cords also listed the names of four

of Lydia’s children: John, Sophia,

Anne a nd Charles.

mcKay consulted the maryland

State Archives, which keeps volu-

minous records chronicling the

state’s history of slavery, which

spanned from shortly after its Co-

lonial founding in the 17th centu-

ry to November 1864, when the

state abolished it. (The Emancipa-

tion Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863,

freed enslaved people only in se-

ceded states, exempting border

states such as maryland, where

there were more than 87,000 en-

slaved blacks in 1860.) In her

search, mcKay found a slave cen-

sus.

The census verified that Lydia

and her children had been en-

slaved. It also disclosed a much

bigger revelation: the name of

their owner, Thomas G riffith.

Quickly, mcKay located the

Griffith property in Gaithersburg.

Then she learned the property

was still in the same family. She

even found huge ledgers at the

BY HEATHER LONG

Democratic presidential candi-
date Pete Buttigieg unveiled a
plan friday to make tuition at
four-year public colleges free for
families earning up to $100,000.
The move is part of a package of
economic policy proposals aimed
at boosting the fortunes of mid-
dle- and working-class Americans
and positioning Buttigieg as a
clear alternative to more-liberal
candidates.
While Sens. Elizabeth Warren
(D-mass.) and Bernie Sanders
(I -Vt.) have proposed making col-
lege free for everyone, Buttigieg is
taking a more targeted approach,
offering free tuition only to fami-
lies he considers middle-class or
lower. His policy calls for reduced
tuition at public universities for

families earning $100,000 to

$150,000 and no tuition for those

below that threshold. Like several

in the Democratic field, Buttigieg

also proposes expanding Pell

Grants to help low-income stu-

dents pay for housing and fees

and investing $50 billion in his-

torically black colleges.

Buttigieg’s new economic plan

includes proposals for universal

prekindergarten, greater college

access, major expansions of af-

fordable housing and job train-

ing, and a bigger tax credit for the

working poor. He plans to fund

the $2.1 trillion worth of new

expenditures over the next de-

cade by raising taxes on the top 1

percent of earners.

The release of the eight-page

plan comes as Buttigieg, the may-

or of South Bend, Ind., has

climbed into the top tier of Demo-

cratic presidential contenders in

Iowa. He increasingly appears to

be carving a policy lane that is left

of former vice president Joe Biden

but not nearly as far as Warren

and Sanders. Nowhere is that

more apparent than in Buttigieg’s

college and health-care plans.

While Biden has proposed free

community college for all Ameri-

cans, Buttigieg’s plan would ex-

pand that to include four-year

public universities, but only for

students from households in the

bottom 80 percent of earners.

Warren and Sanders want free

two- and four-year college for all

and cancellation of most, if not

all, of the $1.6 trillion in student

loans. So far, Buttigieg has called

only for student debt forgiveness

for people in “low quality” pro-

grams, such as many for-profit

schools.

on health care, Warren and

Sanders back medicare-for-all, in

which every American would be

enrolled in the government plan,

while Buttigieg and Biden favor a

public option, which the South

Bend mayor likes to call “medi-

care for All Who Want It.”

“Pete is proposing plans target-

ed to making programs afford-

able for the middle class and

below, not giving it free to every-

one,” said Austan Goolsbee, an

economic adviser to Buttigieg

and former chief economist for

President Barack obama.

others argue that Buttigieg’s

proposals would not go far

enough and that his $100,

cutoff for free college is arbitrary,

especially in a nation where costs

vary greatly between big cities

and more rural areas.

There is widespread agree-

ment in the 2020 Democratic

field that inequality is a top issue

and that the wealthy need to pay

more in taxes, but how much

more is a subject of heavy debate.

Warren has pitched a wealth

tax on Americans with more than

$50 million in assets, among oth-

er new taxes on the rich. Buttigieg

favors a slimmed-down approach

that would tax the capital gains of

the top 1 percent every year by

forcing the richest Americans to

calculate how much their assets

rose (or fell) in value annually,

even if they do not sell the assets.

The rich would have to pay the top

income tax rate on any capital

gains, according to the Buttigieg

plan, a major shift from the cur-

rent system, which taxes capital

gains at a lower rate to encourage

people to invest.

In this latest plan, Buttigieg is

aiming to show some policy lead-

ership by calling for a major ex-

pansion of the earned-income tax

credit (EITC) that helps the work-

ing poor, $200 billion more over

the next decade for job training

and $5 billion to ensure that ap-

prenticeships are available with-

in 30 miles of every American.

“A s president, I will measure

success not just by the size of the

stock market or gross domestic

product, but by whether working

and middle class families are suc-

ceeding,” Buttigieg writes in the

plan’s introduction.

[email protected]

Jeff stein contributed to this report.

Buttigieg’s economic plan proposes free college for lower-income students

Lt. Col. Haldane King, who served

in the famed Tuskegee Airmen,

the first group of black combat

pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps;

an older brother, William “Dolly”

King, was one o f the country’s first

black professional basketball

players; another older brother,

John B. King Sr., became New York

City’s first black deputy superin-

tendent of schools. Haldane King,

the Tuskegee Airman’s oldest

child, was an Air force captain

who flew KC-135 refueling planes

in the Vietnam War; his sister,

Janis King robinson, ran a rural

North Carolina hospital. John B.

King Sr.’s grandson, Keith Norris,

is a renowned UCLA medical

school professor and kidney ex-

pert. And then there is John B.

King Sr.’s son, John B. King Jr.,

who became the nation’s second

black secretary of education.

The Beckers feel a mix of pride

and shame about their family’s

past on the montgomery County

property, which their sixth great-

grandfather purchased nearly 250

years ago, shortly before t he revo-

lutionary War. The land was

passed down to Thomas Griffith,

who owned it for 42 years and

relied on e nslaved labor to run the

property.

“We wanted to apologize, but

we really can’t apologize, because

we didn’t d o it,” s aid Amanda, who

lives in Pennsylvania, where she

helps run her husband’s cemetery

restoration business. “I don’t

know if an apology would even

mean anything to [the Kings] be-

cause we really should be apolo-

gizing to their ancestors.”

“We were just born here,” said

frances, who lives at the farm-

house with her father and sells

vintage auto parts.

“friends have asked us, ‘What

do they want? Do they want mon-

ey?’ ” Amanda said. “We said,

‘They just want us to be careful

with t heir history.’ ”

And they want to be careful

with their own history, too. fran-

ces points to Griffith’s sons, who

fought for the Confederacy.

“I still appreciate all the veter-

ans in our family and consider

Confederates as veterans, too,” s he

said. “I still have questions about

Thomas,” who owned 15 people

ranging in age from 9 to 50 before

emancipation. “ Why did he d o it? I

full lives, families, relationships,
and joy and sadness, but their
experiences were so bound up
with their exploitation,” said
John, 44, president of the Educa-
tion Trust, a nonprofit devoted to
closing achievement gaps. “my
wife and our two girls are living a
life my ancestors could not have
imagined, because of their perse-
verance. Their daily resistance by
living their lives made possible
ours.”
f or much o f the past year, as the
nation marks the 400th anniver-
sary of the first enslaved Africans’
arrival to the English colony of
Virginia, the Kings have em-
barked on an anguished family
history research project — a nd the
most unlikely of friendships with
the great-great-great-grandchil-
dren of Thomas Griffith. The
Kings have always suspected that
the Kings before them were en-
slaved. But they didn’t learn the
exact site of that subjugation until
february: a 190-acre farm in
Gaithersburg called Edgehill, just
25 miles from John’s home in Sil-
ver Spring.
Since then, John and several
relatives have visited the farm,
connecting with Griffith’s descen-
dants, 50-year-old twin sisters
frances Becker and Amanda
Becker mosko, who co-own the
property. Both families have em-
braced the opportunity to learn
about each other’s pasts with
more clarity, despite layers of dis-
comfort and awkwardness.
The King family’s overtures to
the family that once enslaved
their ancestors are highly unusu-
al, according to Chris Haley, direc-
tor of the maryland State Ar-
chives’ slavery project. Descen-
dants of the enslaved usually don’t
connect with descendants of the
enslaver unless they’ve discov-
ered a genealogical link.
“I don’t know of many people
who reach out and are like, ‘You
know what? my family used to
work for y our family. Hey, h ow are
you doing?’ ” said Haley, who is
the nephew o f “roots” author Alex
Haley.
The Kings, though, are no ordi-
nary family.
one great-grandson of the
o ldest-known enslaved King was

fAmIlIes from A

Families form an unexpected

connection over their pasts

The King family tree

A Maryland clan traces its roots to slavery.

Many members of John B. King Jr.’s family lived remarkable lives, including

John B. King Sr., New York City’s first black deputy schools chief; Lt. Col.

Haldane King, a Tuskegee Airman; and William “Dolly” King, one of the first

black pro basketball players.

Source: King family and Ancestry.com

BRITTANY RENEE MAYES AND IAN SHAPIRA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Anne

King

Washington

King

Charles

King

John

King

Sophia

King

William

King

Julia King

Charles E.

King

Lydia Hall King Reason King

ENSLAVED

ENSLAVED ENSLAVED ENSLAVED ENSLAVED ENSLAVED ENSLAVED

Janis King

Robinson

Haldane

King

Lt. Col.

Haldane

King

Eugenia

King

Denauvo

Robinson

Marjorie

King

Joan

King

Austin

Norris

John B.

King Sr.

Elizabeth

Bundick

King

Keith

Norris

Melissa

Steel

King

JOHN

B. KING

JR.

Amina

King

Mireya

King

William

“Dolly” King

Adalinda

King

(remarried)

Estelle Stansberry King

KATHerINe Frey/THe WAsHINgTON POsT

John Becker, father of the current edgehill owners, and John B. King Jr. visit on the farmhouse porch.

The families have embraced the chance to learn about each other’s histories despite discomfort.

Tw in sisters Amanda Becker mosko, left, and frances Becker outside the cabin on their farm where

their ancestor Thomas Griffith once housed enslaved members of the King family.