Dr. Michael H. Forde, the founder of Healing Starts With Knowing, recently took to Instagram and TikTok to address a clip featuring right-wing commentator Benny Johnson. In the video, Johnson had a challenge for his viewers. “I need a name of a single black woman that had something to do with America’s founding,” he said. He then admitted he could only think of one thing. “Didn’t Thomas Jefferson have like half his family, like out of wedlock with the slaves?”
“He asked for one name, one black woman who had something to do with America’s founding. He waited about three seconds,” Forde noted. “ And the best he could offer was Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved women. Referenced not as human beings, but as a historical footnote to a white man’s biography. That answer was not a gap in his argument. That answer was the argument.” Forde then presented two names, Phyllis Wheatley and Elizabeth Freeman.
