The old woman said, waiting.

Essentially a sack of bones, she barely took up any space in the tiny chair.

The curtain began to lift, and the stage lights brightened, but nobody noticed the tears

in her eyes.

What was this spectacle?

This is two-minute black history.

What you didn't learn in school.

Joyce Heff was living a lie, a damned lie.

Like most enslaved women, Heff was at the mercy of her captor.

There was something even more sinister about her situation.

The creator of a so-called, freak show.

The man who enslaved Heff was a liar, a thief, and a con artist.

Heff was a small, thin woman, but she was the biggest part of the racist show.

What she was forced to do was outrageous.

Because of her emaciated wrinkled appearance, Heff was built as George Washington's 161-year-old

nurse.

Of course this was physically impossible, because Heff was born almost 20 years after Washington.

But that didn't stop the con artist from launching his entire career from the lie.

The nature of the falsehood made it necessary for Heff to look as old as possible, so her

captor starved and mistreated her so she would look the part.

When she died, the racist creeps sold tickets to her autopsy, exploiting her body until

the bitter end.

...