BUILDING HISTORY

$5 a Month Slaves Build the White House and the U.S. Capitol

Many of us grew up having been taught the story of Benjamin Banneker, the African American who “built” Washington, D.C., back in the 1790s. (Actually, he surveyed the city and laid out its street grid.) But did you know that the most enduring symbols of the nation’s Capitol–the White House and the Capitol Building to name only two (another is the Smithsonian Institution)—were mostly constructed by enslaved Africans who were paid $5 per month?

A Washington, D.C., reporter, Edward Hotaling, uncovered this fact by researching old pay slips from U.S. Treasury Department archives dating from 1792 to 1800 that show that 400 of the 600 laborers were black slaves—and that their $5 monthly pay was confiscated by their owners, meaning that they received nothing. (Slave labor was used to complete the Capitol in the 1860s as well.) Not even women and children (they were used to mold clay in kilns) were spared the grueling 12-hour-a-day, six-day shifts.

To add insult to injury, the history books ignored the toil of these African Americans for 150 years, until 2010, when a then-bipartisan Congress erected commemorative plaques inside the building they built to honor those who had no choice but to sacrifice for their country. It reads: “This original exterior wall was constructed between 1793 and 1800 of sandstone quarried by laborers, including enslaved African Americans who were an important part of the work force that built the United States Capitol.”