The Black History of the White House (58 page)

  30.
 Ibid.

  31.
 Myra Weatherly,
Benjamin Banneker: American Scientific Pioneer
(Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books, 2006), p. 75.

  32.
 
The Georgetown Weekly Record
, March 12, 1791, cited in Cerami, op. cit, p. 136.

  33.
 Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia
, Query XIV. See also Conor Cruise O'Brien, “Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, October 1996, pp. 53–74.

  34.
 Ibid, Cerami, p. 164.

  35.
 Since 1978, the United States Postal Service has released the following Black Heritage stamps: Harriet Tubman (1978), Martin Luther King (1979), Benjamin Banneker (1980), Whitney Moore Young (1981), Jackie Robinson (1982), Scott Joplin (1983), Carter G. Woodson (1984), Mary McLeod Bethune (1985), Sojourner Truth (1986), Jean Baptiste DuSable (1987), James Weldon Johnson (1988), A. Phillip Randolph (1989), Ida B. Wells (1990), Jan E. Matzeliger (1991), W.E.B. Du Bois (1992), Percy Lavon Julian (1993), Dr. Allison Davis (1994), Bessie Coleman (1995), Ernest E. Just (1996), Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. (1997), Madam C. J. Walker (1998), Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) (1999), Patricia Roberts Harris (2000), Roy Wilkins (2001), Langston Hughes (2002), Thurgood Marshall (2003), Paul Robeson (2004), Marian Anderson (2005), Hattie McDaniel (2006), Ella Fitzgerald (2007), Charles Chesnutt (2008), Anna Julia Cooper (2009) .
See
:/
www.usps.com/communications/news/​stamps/2005/sr05​_016.htm

  36.
 Jefferson Morley, “The Snow Riot,”
Washington Post
, Sunday, February 6, 2005. Also:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/​A55082-2005Feb1​_2.html

  37.
 Ibid.

  38.
 
Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington
, Volumes 3–4 (Washington, D.C.: Columbia Historical Society, 1900), p. 245.

  39.
 Ibid, Morley.

  40.
 Ibid.

  41.
 Karolyn Smardz Frost,
I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad
(New York: Macmillan, 2008), p. 271.

  42.
 “The Statue of Freedom.” See Architect of the Capitol website:
www.aoc.gov/cc/art/freedom.cfm
.

  43.
 Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, “Philip Reed, the Slave Who Rescued Freedom,
Ancestry
, May–June 2009, p. 55. See Mary Jordan, “Tiny Irish Village Is Latest Place to Claim Obama as Its Own,”
Washington Post
, May 13, 2007, and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, “The Quest for Obama's Irish Roots,” December 3, 2008.
Ancestry.com
website:
www.ancestrymagazine.com/2008/12/found/the-quest-forobama%25E2%2580%2599s-irish-roots/
.

  44.
 Holland, p. 5.

  45.
 Smolenyak, “Philip Reed,” p. 54.

  46.
 Holland, p. 6–7.

  47.
 William Seale,
The President's House: A History
(Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 1986), p. 81.

Chapter 4

    1.
 Paul Jennings,
A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison: Electronic Edition
(Chapel Hill, Univ. of North Carolina), 1865.

    2.
 Ibid., p. iii.

    3.
 Ibid., pp. 5–6.

    4.
 Ibid., p. 19.

    5.
 Rachell Swarns, “Madison and the White House, Through the Memoir of a Slave,”
New York Times
, August 16, 2009.

    6.
 Jennings,
Reminiscences
, p. 13.

    7.
 Ibid., p. 13.

    8.
 Ibid., p. 14.

    9.
 Ibid., p. 11.

  10.
 “Research in Progress: Paul Jennings Marries Fanny Gordon.”
http://Montpelier.org/blog/?cat=8
.

  11.
 Swarns, “Madison and the White House.”

  12.
 Beth Taylor, “Paul Jennings—Enamoured with Freedom,”
www.montpelier.org/explore/community/paul_jennings.php
.

  13.
 Ibid., Jennings, p. 12.

  14.
 Mary Kay Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad
(New York: William Morrow, 2007), pp. 42–43; and Jennings,
Reminiscences
, p. v.

  15.
 Jennings,
Reminiscences
, pp. 14–15.

  16.
 Ibid., p. 12.

  17.
 Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl
, p. 38.

  18.
 Ibid., p. 40.

  19.
 Henry Chase, “Plotting a Course for Freedom; Paul Jennings: White House Memoirist,”
American Visions
, Feb.–March, 1995.

  20.
 G. Franklin Edwards and Michel R. Winston, “Commentary: The Washington of Paul Jennings—White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom,” The White House Historical Society.
http://www.whitehousehistory.org/​whha_publications/​publications_documents/​whitehousehistory_​01-jennings.pdf

  21.
 Karl Marx and Shelia Rowbotham,
The Revolutions of 1848: Political Writings
(London: Verso Books, 2010); Priscilla Smith Robertson,
Revolutions of 1848: A Social History
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968); and Roger Price,
The Revolutions of 1848
(Oxford: Macmillan Education, 1968).

  22.
 Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl
, p. 57.

  23.
 John Paynter, “The Fugitives of the
Pearl
,”
Journal of Negro History
, Washington, D.C., July 1916, p. 246.

  24.
 Ibid., pp. 247–248; and Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl
, p. 75.

  25.
 G. Franklin Edwards and Michel R. Winston, “Commentary: The Washington of Paul Jennings—White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom,” The White House Historical Society.
http://www.whitehousehistory.org/​whha_publications/​publications_documents/​whitehousehistory_01-jennings​.pdf

  26.
 Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl
, pp. 122–123.

  27.
 Taylor, “Enamoured with Freedom.”

  28.
 Ibid., and Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl
, pp. 243–244.

  29.
 Daniel Drayton and American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,
Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail: Including a Narrative of the Voyage and Capture of the Schooner Pearl
(New York: B. Marsh, 1855), p. 121.

  30.
 Ricks,
Escape on the Pearl
, p. 44.

  31.
 Ibid., p. 181.

  32.
 The Obamas were not present at the reunion—they were vacationing on Martha's Vineyard at the time. David Montgomery, “For D.C. Family, a Distinguished, If Little-Known Ancestor,”
Washington Post
, August 25, 2009.

  33.
 William Seale,
The President's House: A History
(Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 1986), p. 136.

  34.
 Ibid., pp. 142–143.

  35.
 Ibid., p. 143.

  36.
 Ibid., p. 147.

  37.
 Henry Chase, “Black Life in the Capital,”
American Visions
, February–March, 1995, p. 14.

  38.
 Thomas Jefferson,
Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, Vol. 4, (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1829), pp. 323–333.

  39.
 Glover Moore,
The Missouri Controversy, 1819–1821
, (Lexington, KY: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1953), p. 46.

  40.
 Kenneth C. Barnes,
Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s
(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 3.

  41.
 See Eric Burin,
Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society
(Gainsville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2008); Early Lee Fox,
The American Colonization Society: 1817–1840
(New York: AMS Press, 1971); and Allan Yarema,
The American Colonization Society: An Avenue to Freedom?
(Lanham, MD: Univ. Press of America, 2006).

  42.
 Winthrop D. Jordan,
White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812
(Chapel Hill, NC: 1968), p. 394.

  43.
 Herbert, Aptheker,
American Negro Slave Revolts
(New York: International Publishers, 1943, 1993), p. 368; citing Calvin Jones to Governor John Owen, Wake Forest, North Carolina, December 28, 1830, in MS. Governor's Papers, no. 60, Historical Commission, Raleigh.

  44.
 Charles Sellers,
James K. Polk: Jacksonian, 1795–1843
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 422.

  45.
 Howard Zinn,
A People's History of the United States, 1492–Present
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1980, 2003), p. 127.

  46.
 Kenneth O'Reilly,
Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton
(New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 32.

  47.
 Ibid., p. 33.

  48.
 Ibid., and Christopher Booker,
African-Americans & the Presidency: A History of Broken Promises
(New York: Franklin Watts, 2000), pp. 40–41.

  49.
 Aptheker,
Slave Revolts
, p. 259; and Robert Vincent Remini,
The Life of Andrew Jackson
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 239.

  50.
 Russel B. Nye,
Fettered Freedoms: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830– 1860
(Lansing, MI: Michigan State College Press, 1949), p. 34.

  51.
 Garry Wills,
Negro President
, p. 218.

  52.
 Ibid., p. 219.

  53.
 
Argument of John Quincy Adams Before the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of the United States, Appellants, vs. Cinque, and others, Africans, captured in the schooner Amistad, by Lieut. Gedney, Delivered on the 24th of February and 1st of March 1841
. The complete text of this document is available electronically from History Central:
www.historycentral.com/amistad/amistad.html
.

  54.
 Denise M. Henderson, “John Quincy Adams, the Amistad Case, and the Idea of the Inalienable Rights of Man,”
American Almanac
, August, 1998.
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/amistad.htm
.

  55.
 Exploring Amistad website:
http://academic.sun.ac.za/forlang/bergman/​real/amistad/history/​msp/main_wel.htm

  56.
 
www.whitehouse.gov/about/history

  57.
 The three surnames reflected various stages of the slave status and ownership of Thomas and his family. James Wiggins claimed ownership of Thomas's mother, Charity, at one point; and Myles Greene claimed ownership of his father, Mingo, when he was born. Gen. James Neil Bethune would purchase the entire family about six months after Thomas's birth. For most of his performing years, Thomas would use the surname Bethune, but in his final years, he generally went by Wiggins.

  58.
 Afri-Classical.com website:
http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.​homestead.com/​JohnsonF.html
.

  59.
 On July 22, 1992, the 200th anniversary of his birth, Johnson was honored by the U.S. Senate. “Commemoration of A Musical Master,”
Congressional Record
, U.S. Senate, July 22, 1992, p. S10152. See Library of Congress:
http://rs9.loc.gov/cgi-bin/​query/D?r102:72:./temp/~r1021MHOhw

  60.
 Ibid.

  61.
 See Barbara Clemenson, “Justin Holland: Black Guitarist in the Western Reserve,”
Western Reserve Studies Symposium
: The Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH, 1989; and Douglas Back,
American Pioneers of the Classical Guitar,
liner notes, Mento Music Press SMM 3023, 1994.

  62.
 See Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds.,
Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1855
(Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1980); and Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds.,
Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1865–1900
(Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1986).

  63.
 Howard H. Bell, “Negro Nationalism: A Factor in Emigration Projects, 1858–1861,”
The Journal of Negro History
, January 1962), p. 48; and Robert L. Harris Jr., “H. Ford Douglas: Afro-American Antislavery Emigrationist,”
The Journal of Negro History
, July 1977), p. 224.

  64.
 Deirdre O'Connell,
The Ballad of Blind Tom: Slave Pianist, America's Lost Musical Genius
(New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2009), p. 32.

  65.
 O'Connell,
Ballad of Blind Tom
, p. 29.

  66.
 Deirdre O'Connell, “Who Was Blind Tom,”
BlindTom.org
website:
www.blindtom.org/who_was_blind_tom.html
.

  67.
 Geneva H. Southall,
Blind Tom: The Post–Civil War Enslavement of a Black Musical Genius
(Minneapolis: Challenge Books, 1979); Geneva H. Southall,
The Continuing Enslavement of Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1865–1887)
(Minneapolis: Challenge Books, 1983); and Geneva H. Southall,
Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1849–1908)
(Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1999).

  68.
 See O'Connell,
Ballad of Blind Tom
, p. 132; and Geneva H. Southall, “Blind Tom: A Misrepresented and Neglected Composer-Pianist,”
The Black Perspective in Music
, May, 1975, p. 145.