McNamara: In the late 1800s, Sarah Johnson and her husband are working at Mount Vernon, but there are a lot of other interesting characters on the scene. Can you talk a bit about Edmund Parker, the guard at Washington’s tomb.
Casper: He’s a great character. Edmund Parker served as the guard at Washington’s tomb for most of the time from the early 1870s to shortly before he died, in 1898. In that role, he spoke to visitors, every day when there were visitors' hours, which were six days a week.
He told them about the tomb, he told them about Washington’s last days, he told them about the presidents and kings who had planted trees by the tomb. So he had this public persona that really becomes nationally known. When he died in 1898, there were obituaries of him that ran in newspapers all across the country.
So he had a public persona. But thanks to various other documents, it became possible to figure out his own life story, and his family story, which in some ways are very different.
He had been brought to Mount Vernon back in 1841, not to guard Washington’s tomb, but as a 14-year-old to work in the fields of Augustine Washington. And that’s pretty much what he did, he was a field worker in the 1840s and 1850s. He gets married to another slave who Augustine buys in the 1850s. And they began a family of their own.
And when the Civil War breaks out, he runs away. Basically he runs to Alexandria, he ends up working for some time as a worker for the Union Army, as many African Americans did. And so he has this whole other life, which the visitors never hear about. And he knew how to play his part for the visitors to Washington’s tomb, and he did it very successfully for many years.
McNamara: After Edmund Parker’s death, they replace him with another elderly African American, and they essentially prepped him. The people running Mount Vernon at that time were very much aware that these were performances the visitors expected.
Casper: Absolutely. The superintendent knew the kind of person he wanted there in terms of appearance and in terms of age. And of course people who came after Edmund Parker had not grown up at Mount Vernon, which meant they didn’t have their own history to talk about. They didn’t have any experience in the pre-Civil War Mount Vernon. So they had to be prepped, they had to be given information to share.
And it’s very clear to me that some of them did research on their own. For instance, William Holland, who was the very last of the African-American men to serve as guards at the tomb, he clearly spoke to historians. He learned a lot about George Washington so he could give a monologue that he very well may have crafted himself. It’s not as though they were given a script.
McNamara: You read from the book and spoke at Mount Vernon this week. How did that go?
Casper: It went well, it was very well attended, and it was sponsored by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and Black Women United for Action, which is a local organization in Fairfax County that has worked for years with Mount Vernon to increase the presence of African-American history at Mount Vernon. And these two organizations together, for instance, have been involved for years with annual slave memorial celebrations at Mount Vernon.
At all events which are sponsored or co-sponsored by Black Women United, the event closes with the singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is considered the black national anthem. So it was a combination of talking about the book and celebrating African-American history. It was a really inspiring evening.
McNamara: It must have been very gratifying to return to Mount Vernon with the book out now.
Casper: Absolutely. Mount Vernon has been so generous to me over the years. In terms of welcoming me into the archives to do research and tell a story that’s very different from the one they usually tell. But they in no way ever imposed any barrier at all.
In fact, they welcomed new research about Mount Vernon. And they’ve been wonderful about that. The professional staff at Mount Vernon has really given me all kinds of inside knowledge about the history of the place and the architecture and the way the land has been used. And all of these kinds of things that would be impossible to learn anyplace else. So I was very pleased to be able to talk about the book at the place where so much of it came together.
McNamara: As I was reading the book, and then your notes and the acknowledgments at the end, I realized they obviously didn’t stand in your way.
Casper: No, exactly the opposite! Exactly the opposite! They really invited me in. And as I write in the acknowledgments, they deserve so much credit for welcoming stories of Mount Vernon that aren’t simply George Washington’s stories.
They’ve done so much over the years to increase the presence of African-American history there. And I hope that my book provides a window into a whole century of Mount Vernon’s history that isn’t really there in front of the tourist. Because Mount Vernon, of course, as a historic site, is about the 18th century, not the 19th.
