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The White House

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Photograph of demonstrators in front of the White House protesting the jailing of the Scottsboro boys in 1933.

Credit: Bettman/Corbis

To imagine what it was like here when the White House was being constructed in the 1790s, erase everything else you see now on and around Lafayette Square. The park was a field—muddy or dusty, depending on the weather. Enslaved workers who were building the White House were housed in temporary shelters—each about 10 feet wide and 10 feet long—lined up in rows on the east and west sides of the field.  Like so many buildings in early Washington, the President's House would have been very difficult to construct without enslaved labor, as the city was very sparsely populated and workers were in great demand.

Some early Presidents including Jefferson, Jackson, and Polk brought slaves to the White House, where they almost always lived in basement rooms.  In the summer of 1862, Abraham Lincoln received the first group of African American leaders to visit the executive mansion. Lincoln also met with Frederick Douglass and Sojurner Truth during his time in office. 

Elizabeth Hobbes Keckly, a former slave who had become a successful businesswoman in Washington and the dressmaker and confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, also spent time in the White House during the Lincoln Presidency.  Keckly described her experiences in an 1868 memoir Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. 

African Americans also came to the White House as artists and musicians.  Ten-year old piano prodigy and composer Thomas Greene Bethune is believed to have been the first African American artist to perform at the White House when he played for President James Buchanan in 1860.  The Fisk University Jubilee Singers were the first African American choir to sing at the White House, performing for President Chester A. Arthur in February 1882.  Their program included "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," which newspaper accounts said brought the President to tears.        

In 1901, Booker T. Washington was the first African-American invited to dine with a President at the White House, but racial segregation was also a part of life in the White House well into the 20th century. Alonzo Fields, who worked in the White House from 1931 to 1952, experienced it first hand. In an oral history project produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage called Workers at the White House, Fields commented on what this was like.   

He noted, "They had separate dining rooms – Black and White. We all worked together, but we couldn't eat together… Here in the White House, I'm working for the President. This is the home of the democracy of the world and I'm good enough to handle the President's food – to handle the President's food and do everything – but I cannot eat with the help."

As the nation struggled with issues of segregation and discrimination, African Americans leaders including Mary McLeod Bethune, James Farmer, Dorothy Height, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., and A. Phillip Randolph, visited the White House to advise American Presidents.   In 1964, almost exactly a century after Lincoln received the first group of African Americans visitors to the White House, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African American leaders came to the White House to see President Lyndon Johnson sign the Civil Rights Act guaranteeing equal access to public places and outlawing discrimination. 

The 1960s also saw important civil rights protests in and around Lafayette Square.  After the brutal attacks on demonstrators in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965, protestors stopped traffic in front of the White House by lying down across Pennsylvania Avenue and at least two small sit-ins by protestors took place inside the White House.

Listen to:

The White Tour Audio

Call 1 (202) 595-1859, then 105#.  (Quicktime Version)

Related Images:

White House Picketers, 1946 Click Image to Enlarge Photograph of picketers protesting lyching in front of the White House, 1946. Civil Rights Leaders Meet with President Kennedy Click Image to Enlarge A photograph of Civil Rights Leaders meeting with President Kennedy in the Oval Office, 1963. Police Arrest Civil Rights Demonstrator Click Image to Enlarge Photograph of a Civil Rights protestor being arrested in front of the White House in 1965. President Lyndon B. Johson's Daily Diary- Civil Rights Bill Signing, page2 Click Image to Enlarge Page of President Johnson's daily diary from the day of the Civil Rights Bill signing. The White House Today Click Image to Enlarge Home and office of the President of the United States.

Related Subjects:

African Americans and the White House

Civil Rights Movement

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