Slave Patrols in the President's Neighborhood
Thomas Smallwood detailed the circumstances of his enslavement and life as a free Black man living in Washington City in...
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Philip Reed
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Prominent African-American Women and the White House
Although Michelle Obama was the first African-American first lady of the United States, African Americans have been integrally involved in...
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Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale is synonymous with eighteenth-century portraiture. His depictions of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other famous...
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Decatur House Silhouettes
Through research and analysis of written accounts, letters, newspapers, memoirs, census records, architecture, and oral histories, historians, museum professionals, and...
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Material Culture at Decatur House
Without photographs, paintings, or other visual representations of the Decatur House Slave Quarters from the antebellum period, it is difficult...
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Paul Jennings
Paul Jennings was born in 1799 at Montpelier, the Virginia estate of James and Dolley Madison. His mother, an enslaved woman...
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Enslaved and Entrenched
Elias Polk was born into slavery in 1806 on a farm owned by Samuel Polk, father of the future president of...
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African Americans Enter Abraham Lincoln's White House, 1863-1865
The New Years’ Day reception became a White House tradition with President John Adams in 1801 and ended with President Herbert Ho...
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Plantations & Politics
Speaking before the United States House of Representatives in 1825, congressman James K. Polk described American slavery as “a matter which re...
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The Williams Family
In 1818, John Gadsby was assessed and taxed for owning thirty-six enslaved individuals in Baltimore—including two young women named “Maria” and “K...
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Building the President's House with Enslaved Labor
In several ways, James Hoban’s life resembles the classic immigrant success story. Born to a modest family in County Ki...