Did Dogs Really Eat Slaves, Like in 'Django'? 100 Amazing Facts
About the Negro: Plus, whether slaves rode horses or had
Mandingo death matches. (slaveryimages.org; original source
unidentified) Horses and horsemanship played an interesting role
during slavery. The most famous black horseman in the
Revolutionary period was our old friend, William "Billy" Lee,
George Washington's slave and personal attendant, the only slave
whom Washington freed upon his death. Billy Lee was, by all
accounts, a superb horseman, and rode just behind his master. In
the black abolitionist Henry Bibb's famous slave narrative of
1849, horses compose almost a leitmotif: Before finally
attaining his freedom, he is captured, handcuffed and tied by
his feet to a horse and returned to slavery, but he effects his
ultimate escape by stealing another horse ("the best looking of
them") from a large plantation, and riding him "not less than
forty miles that night, or before sunrise the next morning," to
gain his freedom. Bibb, a famous newsp