This is one of the most famous paintings in American history: Declaration of Independence.

I decided to put red dots on all the men who held slaves.

Next time someone puts them on a pedestal and says we can't question their judgement on guns or whatever, show them this image.

The founders with red dots are the slaveholders. The founders in yellow are the only ones who freed all the people they held.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, raped one of the women he enslaved.

He freed his illegitimate children. But not their mom.

This is James Wilson, a great Scottish-born Pennsylvanian abolitionist who wrote, “Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law" https://twitter.com/liberalicious/status/1168195200478523393

Here's the founders in this painting who weren't slaveholders.

List is short enough to fit in a tweet:

Sam Adams
Robert Paine
Elbridge Gerry
George Clymer
James Wilson
Thomas McKean
Roger Sherman
Charles Thomson
Will Williams
Sam Huntington
John Adams
Will Ellery
George Walton

If we haven't crossed paths on Twitter before, my name is Arlen and I cannot stand when people act like the founding fathers were, like, unquestionable gods. They were people!

Read a couple more of my tweets on this subject here: https://twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/1168150929562066944

Kind of weird that in the year of our lord 2019 we're still walking around with pictures of old slaveholders in our pockets.

At least Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 and Benjamin Franklin on the $100 did eventually free the people they held and spoke out against the practice.

It... kind of does though.

Especially when you realize that some of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave traders whose idea of freedom was themselves being free to conduct their business of importing people from Africa without paying taxes to King George

When people say "But everybody held slaves back then!" remind them of John Adams.

Before he became our second president, he was an abolitonist lawyer who represented escaped slaves in court and tried to free them.

Here is what he said about slavery:

If you appreciated this thread, share it and take a deep breath...

Check this out to learn about the badass early black members of Congress that history has basically erased: https://twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/1169261419981889536?s=21

New: I’ve learned that a well known news organization is working on a fact check of the image I made that went viral.

Because I have nothing to hide, I welcome this!

I’ll of course tweet out a link to their results (no matter what they say).

Big thanks to @KertscherNews of @PolitiFact who poured over countless documents, books, & records to figure out if my claim about founding father slaveholders was true or false.

Here’s their ruling, along with a great article that adds new context: https://twitter.com/politifact/status/1171417224499777536?s=21