Collection 'A Tempest in a Teapot'
First Lady Lou Hoover's invitation to Jessie L. DePriest to a White House tea party in 1929 created a storm of...
Main Content
In 1810 an enslaved woman named Alethia Browning Tanner purchased her freedom with $1400 she had earned selling vegetables in the area that we know today as Lafayette Square. Enslaved people used the open air markets to their advantage, by growing fruits and vegetables on small plots of land and selling them to raise money. Before being landscaped and named for the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824, the land on the north side of the White House was part of public grounds known as President's Park. It was a large open space where many of the daily activities of life in the city – such as buying and selling vegetables and other food – took place. There were no tall buildings surrounding the area, so in the distance you could see the low-lying hills dotted by the occasional farmhouse or outbuilding.
An engraving of Washington in 1800. West end of capitol grounds and Pennsylvania Avenue are shown.
Through her business in President's Park, Alethia Tanner also saved enough money to purchase the freedom of other members of her family. Self-emancipation either by an enslaved person purchasing their freedom, petitioning the court for freedom, or running away was fairly common in the Washington, D.C and greatly bolstered the vibrant free African-American community in D.C. Her nephew John F. Cook, Sr. went on to found the 15th Street Presbyterian Church, becoming the first black Presbyterian minister in the city. In 1870, the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth was organized in the basement of this Church, and in 1892, the school moved into a new building at 128 M Street, NW and was renamed the M Street School. Among the many influential graduates of the M Street School was Charles Hamilton Houston, who fought important legal battles against segregation and discrimination in the early 20th century and established the Howard University School of Law as the leader in legal challenges to segregation that ultimately resulted in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Alethia Tanner's to obtaining her and her family's freedom helped lay the foundations educational, civic, and religious institutions that would contribute to the success of the civil rights movement.
Modern aerial view of Lafayette Square.
First Lady Lou Hoover's invitation to Jessie L. DePriest to a White House tea party in 1929 created a storm of...
Since the White House was first occupied by President John Adams in 1800, influential people and organizations—or those who hoped to...
From its construction in 1792, until the 1902 renovation that shaped the modern identity and functions of the interior of the White...
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. The framers of t...
Chester Alan Arthur's beloved "Nell" died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880. That November, when he was elected vice president, he was...
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton observed, "Our lives are a mixture of different roles. Most of us are...
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., has often been referred to as “The Nation’s Attic” for its vast holdin...
Twentieth-century historical forces and social movements left their marks on the working White House. In 1900, nearly 87,000 inhabitants (almost a third...
The occupational culture and management of the 19th-century White House reflected the social climate and ethnic composition of Washington, D....
In President Theodore Roosevelt’s description of the capture of the HMS Macedonian by the USS United States in his 1882 bo...
Few people know the story of a brave woman named Charlotte Dupuy who was enslaved in Decatur House, the large...