It’s one thing to grow up in historic Georgetown, attending local schools and walking the family pooch in Volta Park. And it’s another thing to write, at the tender age of 24, an important work that brings attention to an up-to-now little-known but important historical event.
(Photo by: The Georgetown Dish)
Dan Rasmussen with Mayor Vincent Gray
Mayor Vincent Gray, joined by Councilmembers Jack Evans (Ward 2), Mary Cheh (Ward 3) and Muriel Bowser (Ward 4) stopped by to hear the author's brief talk. Picking up on the book's theme of enslavement, the Mayor noted that this is the same for the District and its residents. “We in the District of Columbia experience a form of enslavement every day [because our political rights exist] at the whim of whatever political party happens to be in power” in Congress. He was referring to the recent decision by the new Republican majority in the House to take away Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton’s vote in the Committee of the Whole.
(Photo by: The Georgetown Dish)
At the book party: (from left) Councilmember Jack Evans, Dan Rasmussen, Mayor Vincent C. Gray, Councilmembers Mary Cheh and Muriel Bowser and State Board of Education member Ted Trabue.
American Uprising tells in vivid detail of how the uprising and its historical significance were suppressed by Gov. William Claiborne. In a particularly gruesome coda, the bodies of the defeated were dismembered and their heads stuck on pikes that were placed along the banks of the Mississippi. Rasmussen makes the case that these “enslaved predecessors [are] equally important to our nation’s story as the Founding Fathers.”
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