I’ve always been taught that the first president of the United States of America had wooden teeth because his gums were not fertile ground for strong, pearly whites. It was just common knowledge. But recently, writer Michael Coard revealed something that’s widely unknown: Washington’s dentures were made not of wood but of elephant/walrus tusks and, in some cases, human teeth! Take a wild guess which group of humans Washington took his teeth from. Yup, you guessed it—slaves.
I’m sure colonizers are going to lose their natural-born minds with this one. But Washington wrote in his ledger books about his yucky mouth issues, often complaining about the fit of the dentures, and at one point, he shared that he’d paid 122 shillings for nine Negro teeth.
That’s it! It’s bad enough that black folks have never been able to benefit from the luxury of basic humanity, but colonizers were out here buying teeth from slaves? Can black people have anything that actually belongs to us?
Check out this week’s Judge of Characters in the video above to find out the truth about George Washington’s teeth.