Chapter 1
The Courageous Contributions of Enslaved People in America
Did you know the nation’s most famous building was built using slave labor? That’s right. Each year an estimated 1.25 million people visit the White House, where the president of the United States conducts business and lives with the First Family. It is a symbol of pride and hope for people from all walks of life. Yet many Americans don’t know that it was almost entirely built by enslaved people. The origin stories of the White House and the U.S. Capitol Building are examples of how the contributions of enslaved Africans and African Americans are hidden in plain sight.
President George Washington had the dream of building the White House, or the “President’s House,” as it was then called. In 1791 President Washington located what he believed was the perfect spot for such an important edifice. He enlisted the architect James Hoban to design it.
The White House was almost fully erected by 1800, due in large part to construction work performed by enslaved people. The United States government didn’t actually own the enslaved people who constructed the nation’s most iconic building, although George Washington was a slave owner himself.
Instead, District of Columbia city officials “leased” them from their owners. Think of it this way: Enslaved African American were hired out by their owners, who earned income, like monthly rent on an apartment, for all the labor of masonry, painting, carpentry, and brickwork. The United States got a beautiful presidential manor, slave owners were paid for the work to build it, and the enslaved people who actually did the work got nothing.
Constructing a massive structure like the White House was not an easy feat! Enslaved people did all the arduous and backbreaking tasks, including log chopping, hand chiseling, and hauling heavy stones from nearby quarries. And they weren’t riding in the massive cement trucks you may have seen at construction sites in your city or town. The quarriers transported stones and other material by oxen to a river, loaded it onto small sailing ships or schooners, and then sent it onward to the D.C. wharf, where it was unloaded and hauled to the construction sites.
City commissioners who were responsible for the construction of the President’s House and the U.S. Capitol Building recognized that erecting such impressive monuments and the surrounding city would require a variety of talented tradesmen, and a lot of them. They first looked to Europe, hoping to find white men who were looking for an opportunity to come to America to do the work. When they failed to secure enough European laborers for the projects, they did what the original colonists had done: They got enslaved people to do the job.
We don’t know much about the men who helped construct two of the nation’s most revered historical monuments. We do know some of their names, the jobs they did, and the fees the slave owners were paid for their labor.
Construction of the Capitol Building was done by free men of color for meager wages, and by enslaved Black men, who received very little pay (if they were lucky) or no pay at all. Slave owners earned roughly five dollars per day for slave labor, and in some instances an enslaved person might receive a few pennies from a generous owner. In today’s economy, that five dollars earned from slave labor would be worth about $170, while the three cents a slave might be paid for his work would be a little over one dollar today. Some free men of color earned around a dollar a day, roughly $34 in today’s economy. Both free and enslaved men could earn and keep any extra wages they earned working Saturday nights and Sundays. Even still, white slave owners took home the lion’s share of wages paid for construction work on the U.S. Capitol.
Slave laborers most likely worked twelve-hour days—plantation hours they were accustomed to in grueling heat and humidity in summers, frigid temperatures in the winters. They had only basic tools, like pit saws—two-man saws—for cutting timber and clearing land and simple pulleys for lifting large stones and other materials.
President John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams were the first presidential family to live in the White House. It would be over two hundred years, and forty-three presidents, before the first Black president and his family lived in the White House. President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, made American history when they became the first Black First Family and moved into a house that had been built centuries earlier by enslaved people.
The Statue of Freedom
Look closely at the top of the U.S. Capitol Building and you will see a bronze sculpture of a woman with a brooch inscribed with “U.S.” In her hands she is holding a wreath of laurels, symbolizing American victory, and the U.S. battle shield with thirteen stripes to represent the thirteen colonies. She signifies America’s enduring commitment to liberty and justice for all people.
The irony is that it was the tedious and meticulous metal-casting work of an enslaved man that made her iconic image possible.
A plaster model of the statue was created and sent from Rome. But when it arrived in 1859, no one knew how to disassemble the massive figure so that it could be transported to a nearby workshop, where it would be cast, or molded, in bronze metal.
An Italian artisan had been brought in to do the work, but he quit abruptly over low wages. Clark Mills was the foundry owner who had been hired to cast the statue in bronze. But Mills couldn’t do the job if he couldn’t get all the pieces carefully taken apart and transported to the foundry.
Luckily, Philip Reid was there to save the day. Reid was an enslaved man owned by Mills who figured out a way to disassemble and transport the five sections of the plaster model to the foundry using a pulley-and-tackle system. At the foundry they reassembled the parts before casting the model in bronze.
The REINS of Slavery Tighten
During the early years of the international slave market, whites purchased African people from West and West-Central Africa who had been captured by European traffickers and, in some instances, leaders from other African nations. Over time, however, and especially after the United States passed the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves of 1807, Black people born in America outnumbered those captured and brought to American shores. It was still legal to buy and sell enslaved Black people, just not those who were imported from Africa.
Copyright © 2025 by Patricia Williams Dockery. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
