On the morning of George Washington’s birthday, young Delia and her father are scrambling to put together their most important assignment of the year: a cake for the president himself.
“This cake has to be special,” Delia narrates. “President Washington is the most famous person in all of America. Papa is the general of the president's kitchen.”
This “general” is Washington's famed enslaved chef, Hercules, whose triumph over a sugar shortage on this special occasion is cheerfully chronicled in the children's book A Birthday Cake for George Washington. At the end of the story, which concludes with an illustration of the president with one arm around Hercules, the author has appended a note describing the chef’s life in greater detail.
On this page, writer Ramin Ganeshram cites a biographical fact that is omitted from the book’s central narrative – namely, that Washington’s birthday was principally a notable event for Hercules because it was the date he would ultimately flee to freedom.
“Hercules did escape from [Washington's plantation home] Mount Vernon – in the early hours of February 22, 1797,” the note reads. “It was President Washington's sixty-fifth birthday.”
The contrast between this historical reality and the seemingly lighthearted existence led by Hercules and Delia in the book's illustrated portions has incited criticisms of Ganeshram and artist Vanessa Brantley-Newton's depiction of “happy” slaves.