SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Michael Thurmond thought he was reading familiar history at the burial place of Georgia’s colonial founder. Then a single sentence on a marble plaque extolling the accomplishments of James Edward Oglethorpe left him stunned speechless.
Within a lengthy tribute to the Englishman who died in 1785, the inscription read: “He was the friend of the Oppressed Negro.”
Oglethorpe led the expedition that established Georgia as the last of Britain’s 13 American colonies in February 1733. Thurmond, a history aficionado and the only Black member of a Georgia delegation visiting the founder’s tomb outside London, knew Oglethorpe had tried unsuccessfully to keep slaves out of the colony. Historians widely agreed he was concerned for the safety and self-sufficiency of white settlers rather than the suffering of enslaved Africans.
Could Georgia’s white founding father possibly have been an ally to Black people in an era when the British Empire was forcing thousands into bondage?
“It was stunning,” Thurmond recalled. ”Initially, I was consumed by disbelief. I didn’t believe it was true.”
Thurmond would grapple with questions raised by that visit for the next 27 years, compelled to take a closer look at Oglethorpe. Now he has written a provocatively titled book: “James Oglethorpe, Father Of Georgia — A Founder’s Journey From Slave Trader to Abolitionist.”
Published this month by the University of Georgia Press, Thurmond’s book makes a case that Oglethorpe evolved to revile slavery and, unlike most white Europeans of his time, saw the humanity in enslaved Africans. And while Oglethorpe’s efforts to prohibit slavery in Georgia ultimately failed, Thurmond argues he left a lasting — and largely uncredited — legacy by influencing early English abolitionists.