People shocked, shocked to learn there was slavery in DC
Some people saw fit to get huffy about Michelle Obama’s saying that slaves built the White House. Jeezus, folks, where have you been? You do realize Washington was in the South, right? You know there were slave markets in DC? You know the White House wasn’t built from a kit? Why wouldn’t slaves have built it?
There is little dispute among historians that slaves had a role in the building of the White House. According to the White House Historical Association’s website, planners had initially intended to import workers from Europe but had trouble recruiting any, so they “turned to African-American — enslaved and free — to provide the bulk of labor that built the White House, the United States Capitol, and other early government buildings.”
And guess what, that’s why slavery was a thing at all – the colonists desperately needed labor, a lot more labor than they had, so – they stole it. They didn’t have enough so they stole other people’s.
Jesse Holland, a Washington-based journalist who wrote “The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House,” said that most people never thought about how the president’s house and other important government buildings had been constructed, but that historians had long acknowledged the role of slaves.
“If you think about it, it would be pretty obvious: The White House is a neo-Classical mansion that was built in the South during slavery, and a majority of the mansions that were built in the South during slavery used slaves,” Mr. Holland said in an interview.
“We as Americans build up a myth of our country, and a lot of times, we don’t want to look behind that myth,” he added. “For me, finding out the truth and acknowledging the participation of everyone in the construction of this country just makes our country richer.”
Mrs. Obama was reaching for a similar point on Monday, emphasizing as President Obama often does that the strengths of the United States spring in part from its ugly, painful past.
It was a hell of a powerful moment in her speech, too.
She said America’s story was “the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, intelligent, black young women — playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”
Well, yes. It’s not as if that’s not part of the story.
There was an open air slave market within sight of the US Capitol – I think it was across the street from Air and Space. There was a “sell kidnapped free men and women south” slave trading business on Duke Street in Old Town Alexandria, 5 miles away. It’s a museum now.
The landscape is foul with the relics of slavery, and white Americans who deny it make me ashamed and despairing.
I’ve been to Old Town Alexandria, including Duke Street. Last Women in Secularism.
The things that your compatriots, Alona and Ophelia, just can’t cope with emotionally continue to amaze me!
Given that the White House was built twice, at the end of C18 and after what we call the War of 1812, where it was built and the demographics of what is now DC it would be almost impossible that no slaves were involved.
Shall we move on to the question of whether the money paid went to the slaves themselves or to their owners? Another point on which the moral cowards are seeking to blur the issues.
There’s another museum in Alexandria, a local history museum few blocks away, that has a pretty decent exhibit on Civil War life (Alexandria was ‘occupied’) and does one of the better jobs I’ve seen in a Southern state in looking at what life was like for African-Americans pretty unflinchingly. Then I walked into the gift shop, which was full of crap with Confederate flags. I wrote them a feedback note on that, and I’m glad the African-American man and his young son who were there at the same time didn’t go in the gift shop. I now make it a point to not buy anything in gift shops that sell Confederate crap.
Back to the original topic — people’s willful ignorance always surprises me, though it shouldn’t. There’s been a 150-year campaign to revise the previous 150 years of this Continent’s history, while trying to rewrite it as it was being created. And it has been largely successful, at least with those who never got beyond high school history taught by coaches. (I have many anecdotes about high school “history” classes in the South.)
As do I. My husband complains at times that they heard about Sojourner Truth almost every day, which he thinks is excessive. I, on the other hand, never heard of Sojourner Truth in school (I did read extensively, so had found out about her on my own). When I took college history, I was shocked at what I didn’t know. My Oklahoma history teacher was so uninterested in anything outside of football that I thought Oklahoma history was boring; I found out otherwise in college, where I found the rich, colorful, and scandalous history of Oklahoma. It was fascinating once I learned that Oklahoma history is more than Alfalfa Bill Murray and OU football.
Fuuuuuuck. I didn’t know museum shops that sell Confederate tchotchkes was a thing. How incredibly gross.
Gone With the Wind has a lot to answer for.
National Park gift shops (either run by concessionaires or non-profit foundations affiliated with park) sold Confederate tchotchkes until very recently.
Fail’reilly’s spouting garbage about slaves being “well-fed” and in “decent lodgings provided by the government” apparently… as if that makes slavery better…