In many ways, the White House doubles as an office building and as a history museum. Throughout the halls of the East Wing, West Wing, Residence, and Eisenhower Building are rooms that hosted some of the most consequential meetings in American history.
On the walls are paintings depicting our nation’s unfolding story, along with the women and men who have helped write it. But despite this rich history, most staffers will agree that it can be difficult to appreciate the White House for anything other than a place of (very hard) work.
If you did take a few hours to explore the White House grounds, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama would be two of the relatively few acknowledgements of White House Black history you’d find. As lovely as those portraits are, the fact of the matter is: Black people built the White House and have played leading roles in shaping its history. This Black History Month, I set out to learn –and share – some of their stories.
The Washington, D.C. of 1792:
When construction began on the White House that year, D.C. was only two years old and located in bona fide swampland – and bona fide slavery territory. The government indeed turned to slave labor – in addition to white wage labor — to bring the blueprint for our nation’s capital to life. From mining and transporting sandstone, to making and laying bricks, enslaved Blacks toiled for eight years to build the White House, knowing all the while that “The People’s House” would never include them.
Once the White House was built, nearly every president from Thomas Jefferson through Zachary Taylor utilized slave labor in the Executive Mansion. Enslaved Blacks – some of whom were personally owned by the president under whom they served – worked in the kitchen and garden by day and slept in the attic by night. One was named Paul Jennings. Jennings was just ten years old when he arrived at the White House in 1809 to serve as a valet to the newly-inaugurated President Madison.
When the British burned the White House down during the War of 1812, it was Jennings – then fifteen years old – who helped rescue George Washington’s portrait before it was too late. Thanks to his heroic efforts, that painting still hangs on the wall of the East Room of the White House. Before he died – as a free man – he wrote the first-ever autobiographical account of life at the White House.
While history often credits Abraham Lincoln with “freeing the slaves,” textbooks are largely silent as to the audience that abolitionists like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass had with the president. Both leaders visited Lincoln at the White House between 1863 and 1865 – Douglass as many as three times – and used those visits as opportunities to make the case for full liberation.
Meanwhile, several Black staff in the Lincoln White House used their proximity to power to play the inside game. William Slade served as White House usher and personal valet to Lincoln. A friend of Frederick Douglass, Slade used his influence as one of Lincoln’s confidantes to advocate for not just a complete end to slavery, but also for civil rights and voting rights. Elizabeth Keckley, who was enslaved from birth until age 37, bought her freedom and started a dressmaking business in Washington, D.C. That business led her to Mary Todd Lincoln, and the First Lady soon made Keckley her personal seamstress. Keckley became a trusted advisor and friend to the Lincolns, even using her position to help arrange one of Sojourner Truth’s White House visits. And like Paul Jennings, she eventually published a memoir telling her slavery-to-the White House story.
During Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, a group of Black leaders from inside and outside the government joined together to form the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, informally but popularly known as President Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet.” The group advocated for Black economic empowerment, specifically the inclusion of Black Americans in New Deal programs. And it was held together by its sole woman member: Mary McLeod Bethune.
A prominent educator nicknamed “The First Lady of the Struggle,” Bethune visited the White House often during FDR’s presidency to meet with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Because of the poor treatment to which Black guests would often be subjected at the hands of the White House guards, the First Lady made it a habit to greet Bethune at the front gates and walk with her up the driveway – sometimes even arm-in-arm. Such a display of racial equality – superficial as it may have been – was an uncommon and largely unpopular sight at the White House at that time. In using their positions to effect presidential action on civil rights, Bethune and the other members of the Black Cabinet developed a strategy that Dr. King and other leaders successfully used during the Civil Rights Movement.
It was not until the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower that an African American was appointed to a senior staff position at the White House. E. Frederic Morrow, who served as the White House’s Administrative Officer for Special Projects, was the grandson of slaves. He worked for the NAACP, served our country during World War II, graduated from law school, and had a successful career at CBS before joining the Eisenhower campaign and ultimately the president’s White House staff. Over the nearly six years he spent in his position, he experienced many of the challenges that often come with being the first. In his book, Black Man in the White House, he wrote:
“I am a pioneer in what I am trying to do, and whenever one is a Negro pioneer, he has the severe responsibility of doing the kind of job that will open opportunities to others of his race without their having to go through all of his difficulties.”
He battled feelings of being a diversity hire, acknowledging that there were “those who believe that I am here merely as ‘window-dressing,’ and have no real authority or importance.” He avoided social events, recognizing that his “every move is open to observation.” And, he experienced a sort of DuBoisian double consciousness, feeling what he called his “deepest conflict,” that he was both “an appointee in the Administration, with loyalty to that Administration, to the party and the President,” and “a Negro who feels very keenly the ills that afflict my race...” These stressful feelings are universal to Black folks who work in predominantly white spaces, as are his experiences being disrespected by those who assumed he was anything other than a member of the professional staff.
When I reflect on the stories of these trailblazers, I wonder how they would feel if they were alive today. How would they feel if they saw a Black woman — White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre — serving as the President’s mouthpiece? How would they feel if they saw another Black woman — OMB Director Shalanda Young — managing the federal government and overseeing the President’s budget? How would they feel if they saw a Black woman and a Black man — White House Legislative Affairs Director Shuwanza Goff and Director of Public Engagement Steve Benjamin, respectively — leading the White House’s engagement with Congress and the American people? How would they feel if they saw President Barack Obama and my former boss, Vice President Kamala Harris?
I presume they would feel proud to see the People’s House finally living up to its name and satisfied to know that their labors were not in vain. But as incredible as it is to have so many Black faces in high places, I think they would feel even prouder to see the most junior Black staffers flashing their badges at the gate and walking confidently through it. Why? Because they would see that the blessings they helped secure have become generational. They would know – as Vice President Harris often says – that in this relay race of history, the baton is now in those young staffers’ hands. They will run their race well before handing it off.
Gevin Reynolds is a former speechwriter to Vice President Kamala Harris.