Black Men Built the Capitol Quotes

“Slave owner Edmund Plowden, who lived in what is now St. Mary’s County, Maryland, owned sixty-four slaves and rented out three men—Gerard, Tony, and Jack—to work at the Capitol. Although Plowden did not lift a single stone or cut down a single tree, he made $15 a month off of the Capitol construction. He was only required to provide his slaves with a blanket.”
― Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History In and Around Washington, D.C.

“Slaves also could often be seen herded across the National Mall, some heading to Alexandria, Virginia, for sale and others toward the slave pens and markets that quickly sprang up around the edges of the Mall. While slave markets and pens were scattered all around the District of Columbia—including near the White House (Lafayette Tavern on F Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth NW near the White House) and in Georgetown (McCandless Tavern near the southwest corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street NW)—the best known were located near or on the National Mall.”
― Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History In and Around Washington, D.C.

“Today’s National Mall is a lush green oasis of museums, monuments, and buildings running through the center of the most powerful city in the world—a place where Americans feel welcome to celebrate and pay homage to their country’s history and future. But the Mall hasn’t always been so welcoming, especially to African Americans. In fact, it was the last place any black person wanted to be; before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Mall claimed some of the most infamous slave markets of Washington, D.C.”
― Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History In and Around Washington, D.C.

“Records show that slaves who lived in the Washington, D.C., area made up a good portion of the labor pool that worked on the Capitol. More than four hundred slaves, or more than half of the documented workforce that constructed the Capitol, cleared trees from Jenkins Hill and dug up stumps for the wide avenues that radiate out into the city, according to research first publicized by NBC reporter Edward Hotaling in 2000. We now know that slaves baked the bricks used for the building’s foundation and walls, sawed lumber for the interior walls and floors, dug the trenches for the foundation, worked the Virginia quarries where the sandstone was cut, and laid the stones that hold up the Capitol to this day.”
― Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History In and Around Washington, D.C.