Washingtons

In 2000 if you had gathered in one place the 160,000 Americans with the surname  of Washington, you might  have noticed that 90% of them were black. Around 1865 the name had been chosen by newly  freed people themselves. Hence, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Denzel Washington and so on. 

Another common choice was Jefferson. 

The claim that freed black people adopted the surnames of their former owners is nonsense. Why would they do that?  I suppose this fanciful tale is part of the Lost Cause mythology about grateful slaves. 

We do not know why Washington and Jefferson became popular choices among freed black people. Both men were racists. Both had owned many human beings. Both were tall. Washington had, in his will, set free his enslaved people--but not until after the death of Martha Washington. Jefferson had admitted privately that slavery was wrong, but he had mortgaged his enslaved people. Sp he could not free them. He did free the children he fathered with Sally Hemings, the enslaved half-sister of his dead wife. (The life of a plantation owner was, in those days, socially complicated.)