"He wrote his way into history."
Long before Barbara Hinksman became a cherished mother, grandmother, teacher and a quiet light to everyone who knew her, the courage that shaped her was already moving through the generations.
Barbara was the great-granddaughter of John Washington, a man who escaped slavery, served in the Union Army, and wrote his own memoir of freedom in his own hand.
A Lineage of Grace
John Washington was born enslaved in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1838. As the Civil War swept through the South, he made the decision that would change everything for his descendants: he walked away from bondage and crossed Union lines to freedom.
He went on to serve in the Union Army, build a life as a free man, and remarkably sit down years later to write his own account of his escape. In an era when literacy among formerly enslaved people was itself an act of defiance, John Washington picked up a pen and authored his own story.
His handwritten manuscript, "Memorys of the Past," was preserved by his family for more than a century before reaching historian Dr. David Blight. It is one of only fifty-five known post–Civil War slave narratives, and among only a handful written by a man who freed himself.
John Washington's memoir was published in 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dr. David W. Blight, alongside the parallel story of Wallace Turnage, in A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation.
Dr. Blight, a leading historian of slavery and the Civil War at Yale University, recognized the rarity and historical importance of John Washington's handwritten account. The book pairs scholarly context with the original memoirs themselves, letting John Washington and Wallace Turnage speak in their own voices, more than a century after they wrote their words down.
The little girl in this photograph would grow up to become the radiant woman we all love.
She never met her great-grandfather. But the same hand that signed "To my Daddy, from Barbara" would, decades later, write its own quiet legacy, into every classroom she stood in and every life she touched.
John Washington wrote his way to freedom.
Barbara wrote her way into the hearts of everyone she ever met.
Listen: NPR's 2007 interview
In December 2007, NPR's Fresh Air spoke with descendants of John Washington spoke with descendants of John Washington and Wallace Turnage about what it meant to discover their ancestors' words preserved on the page. The interview is a rare gift - family voices reflecting on the weight of carrying such a legacy forward.
Source: NPR, Fresh Air (2007). Original story available at NPR.org →