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George Washington House in Barbados is a historic house where the future first U.S. President George Washington visited, in 1751. He was 19 years old at the time traveling with his ailing half-brother, Lawrence Washington.

In 2011, the property was designated as a UNESCO protected property within the World Heritage Site of Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison area.

Barbados is the only country outside the United States that George Washington ever visited.

In 1997, during an official visit to Barbados with her husband, President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton unveiled a plaque outside the house:

he nation’s founders believed in white supremacy, and they were not ashamed to say so.

The first slaves arrived here in 1619. Between 1619 and 1865, Virginia passed more than 130 slave statutes to regulate the ownership of Black people. A 1662 law made all children of enslaved mothers slaves, regardless of the father’s race or status, so that rape by white slave-masters couldn’t create a free child. A 1667 law codified that slaves who converted to Christianity were still slaves. A 1669 law allowed slaves to be killed for resisting authority.

Reparations for slavery have already been paid
On April 16, 1862, more than eight months before he issued his Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. It provided for immediate emancipation of slaves and compensation to slave owners loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave. Over the next nine months, the board of commissioners appointed to administer the act approved petitions, completely or in part, from former owners for the freedom of 2,989 former slaves. Lincoln’s administration paid about $1 million to slave owners in D.C. for the loss of property.

If you didn’t know some of these facts before reading them here, what else don’t you know about the hidden truths of Black American history?