The Black History of the White House (14 page)

It appears that blacks were not taught how to carve stone, a highly skilled task, but instead were ordered to do the bulk of the digging and excavation. It is certain that black slaves labored at the quarry in Aquia, Virginia. Arnebeck's research indicates that they “tended” to the white and free masons who cut,
polished, carved, and set the stone both at the White House and at the Capitol. In August 1795, there were forty-six slaves working with the stone masons at the quarry. And enslaved blacks were likely the ones who did the cleanup work around the quarry. According to surviving payroll records, the blacks known to have slaved there were Jack Fuller, Bob, Alexander, and Moses. It is possible that others who were listed on the payroll—Nias Cooper, Jesse Cooper, Joshua Doing, Jacob Piles, Nimrod Young—were either free or enslaved blacks.

One free black who was involved in the building process was George Planter. According to Allen, Planter owned a boat that was used to transport stone from the quarries. This was likely a highly lucrative enterprise. There is not a lot of other personal information about Planter, but his situation implies that perhaps other free blacks with skills, needed equipment, or other talents worked on building the city as well.

Although there is plenty of historical evidence that blacks were used for making and laying bricks, Arnebeck found only one advertisement for a slave bricklayer in the area newspaper. There is not a lot of direct evidence of the specific role of blacks in the brickwork that went into the White House and the Capitol. It is known, for example, that brickwork contractors Lovering and Lovell wanted and used African Americans in their business.

In addition to the enslaved blacks who were forced to toil in the development and construction of Washington, D.C., a number of free blacks were also involved, including Benjamin Banneker. Although his father and grandfather had been enslaved at various points in their lives, Banneker was born to free parents on November 9, 1731, near Baltimore, Maryland. Banneker's ancestry was unusual for the period. His white grandmother, Mollie Welsh, had been an indentured servant from England
who finished her seven years of servitude and bought a farm near the Patapsco River. She eventually saved enough to purchase two slaves. Reportedly, one of those was Banna Ka, later called Banneka and then anglicized to Banneker. Some research has indicated that Banneker's father was an African king who had been stolen off the western coast of Africa. One can only speculate about life on the farm, but apparently it was so harmonious that after several years of prosperity Mollie freed both Banneker and the other enslaved individual. Within a short time, Mollie Welsh and Benjamin Banneker married and eventually raised a family of four children, the oldest a girl named Mary.

As an adult, Mary married a black man who had been captured in Africa just as her father had. However, after he converted, joined the Church of England, and was baptized with the name Robert, he was released from slavery. A free black man, Robert married Mary Banneker and adopted Mary's last name as his own. Mary and Robert Banneker had four children as well, one boy and three girls. They named their boy Benjamin.

Robert displayed the same industrious spirit as his in-laws and soon owned 120 acres of farmland in the area where Benjamin and his sisters would grow up. Mollie took a particular liking to the boy and began to give him special tutoring. She had him study and read the Bible, and later sent him to an integrated school nearby. He became a bookworm. As he grew, his studies expanded to include mathematics and astronomy, and his intellectual talents became known throughout the area. He earned a living farming tobacco.

Benjamin Banneker was sixty years old and living on his farm in Patapsco Valley, Maryland, when he was hired to survey Washington, D.C. He and Major Andrew Ellicott arrived in the area on February 7, 1791, and set up camp. Although he had little experience conducting field surveys, Ellicott needed
Banneker for his knowledge of astronomy. His principal duties included monitoring the instrument known as the astronomical clock and recording and studying the movement of the stars and the sun. Contrary to subsequent rumors, Banneker did not assist in designing the city and there is no evidence that he and L'Enfant had met. However, Banneker played an essential role in laying out the city's boundaries. He was paid $60.00 for approximately three months of work he conducted in 1791.
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In March 1791, his efforts were praised in the
Georgetown Weekly Record
, whose editor described Banneker as an “Ethiopian whose abilities as a surveyor and astronomer clearly proved that Mr. Jefferson's concluding that race of men were void of ‘mental endowment' was without foundation.”
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The
Record
's editor was referring to the copious passages in Jefferson's
Notes on the State of Virginia
in which he makes disparaging remarks about the intelligence and characteristics of African Americans. In addition to attacking the quality of the poetry of celebrated black writer Phillis Wheatley (whose poem opens this chapter), Jefferson wrote:

Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. . . . But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture.
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Jefferson's bigotry notwithstanding, Banneker made a substantial contribution to the surveying of the nation's capital city.

Banneker later had a famous correspondence with Jefferson, whom he had never met. In a long letter dated August 19, 1791, Banneker chastised Jefferson, then secretary of state, for his views on blacks. He reminded Jefferson of “the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition” and quoted Jefferson's renowned opening to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Banneker's letter argued that Jefferson and all professed Christians had an obligation “to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under.” Banneker went on to say:

I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves, and for those inestimable laws, which preserved to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous, that every individual, of whatever rank or distinction, might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof; neither could you rest satisfied short of the most active effusion of your exertions, in order to their promotion from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them.
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The twelve-page letter he sent personally to Jefferson was later published in Banneker's
Almanac
. As a black man in the 1790s, Banneker showed great courage—and took great risks—by criticizing Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in a public manner. Speaking against slavery was illegal in most of the South, and unwise from the perspective of his personal security. Nevertheless, Jefferson responded to Banneker within two weeks. “Nobody wishes more than I do,” he wrote in a letter dated August 30, 1791, “to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & America.” Jefferson did not address the fact that their “degraded condition” is a direct result of the slavery that had been enshrined in the Constitution. He went on to say, “I can add with truth that nobody wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstance which cannot be neglected, will admit.” Jefferson was politely deferential to Banneker's criticisms without in any way committing to use his authority to assist Banneker and the abolitionist movement.

Banneker's fame continued to grow after his work with Ellicott. From 1792 to 1797, he published a well-received and commercially successful almanac,
Benjamin Banneker's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris For the Year of Our Lord. . . .
The popular almanac contained essays, practical information, short stories, poems by Phillis Wheatley, and abolitionist arguments advocating the illegalization of slavery. Each almanac also contained an ephemeris, an astronomical chart that shows the positions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Due to deteriorating health, he was forced to suspend his publication after 1797. Banneker died on October 9, 1806, five years after construction of Washington, D.C., was complete and the city officially occupied. In 1980 the U.S. Postal Service celebrated his accomplishments by dedicating a first-class stamp to him in its Black Heritage series.
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Little is known about other free blacks who helped build the new city. Among those known to have worked there are Cesar Hall, Isaac Butler, and Jerry (or Jeremiah) Holland. In the records, Hall and Butler are listed as Free Cesar and Free Isaac. They all worked at the White House construction site as laborers. In the records for 1795, Holland was to be paid $8 per month for being considered “the best hand in the department”—a high wage for a black person. However, no records have been found to indicate that he actually got paid that amount. Historical documents indicate that he later worked as a servant for the commissioners in April 1798 and 1800, and lived in a house that was perhaps one that the commissioners built for skilled workers. Unfortunately, payroll records and other data only begin to give a glimpse of the complicated lives these workers led.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, white people's fear of and antagonism toward black folks in Washington, D.C., grew, and in 1835 the city's first race riot erupted. R. Beverly Snow, a free black man, owned a popular restaurant, the Epicurean Eating House, located approximately ten blocks from the White House on the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania. On the night of August 4, Arthur Bowen was accused by the neighbor of his enslaver, Anna Maria Thornton, of having entered her room drunk and carrying an axe.
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Although Thornton would later state that she perceived no harm from Bowen, and actually tried to defend him, he was eventually arrested. The incident, occurring only four years after the infamous Nat Turner-led slave rebellion in neighboring Virginia, stirred up a mob of white males who took to the streets to get Bowen. They also sought those who were perceived to be spreading abolitionism. When Marines were sent in to protect the jail, the crowd turned their attention to Snow, incited by a rumor he had, in the words
of the
Washington Mirror
, “used very indecent and disrespectful language concerning the wives and daughters” of whites.
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A lynch mob formed and came after him. In the three days of rioting that followed, many blacks were attacked. Snow escaped, but many others were not as lucky. Snow's bar was trashed, and a number of black businesses, churches, and homes, as well as a black orphanage were attacked, burned, or demolished. The U.S. military finally had to intervene to stop the armed bands of white men who were roving the city hunting for free blacks and abolitionists.
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In fact, dealing with the lynch mobs ultimately led to the creation of the U.S. National Guard. It also led to a ban on blacks' either selling liquor or owning a commercial business in Washington, D.C.