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"Running from the Temple of Liberty": The Pearl Incident
On April 15, 1848, the Pearl schooner was docked at the wharf located at the foot of Seventh Street in Washington, D.C., waiting for passengers to arrive. The wharf was situated in a less-traveled area of Southwest D.C. and was chosen for its secluded location. The high riverbank, wide stretches of fields, and the lack of buildings in the vicinity
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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 Kilkenny, Ireland, Hoban studied at the Dublin Society School of Architectural Drawing before seeking greater opportunities abroad. He arrived in the new United States by 1785 and was settled in Charleston, South Carolina, by 1787, where he and his business partner Pierce Pu
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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 Americans are displayed in several of the country’s most prominent art galleries and museums, including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the White House. In his lifetime, Peale fostered close relationships with U.S. pr
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"We Shall Overcome"
After the 1964 electoral landslide, President Lyndon Johnson’s political position changed considerably. With a larger liberal majority in both houses of Congress secured, Johnson believed he now had an electoral mandate to move forward on the issue of civil rights. He wasted no time in setting a marker for his goals. In his 1965 inaugural address, Johnson intimated that he would pu
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Anti-lynching and the White House
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and activist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 An African-American woman of “striking courage and conviction,” she received national recognition as the leader of the anti-lynching crusade.2 Wells-Barnett sought a federal anti-lynching law that would convict forms of “violence in which a mob, under the pretext of administering justice withou
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Daniel Webster's House
At the corner of H Street and Connecticut Avenue, the United States Chamber of Commerce Building sits where a three-and-a-half story brick house once stood. The house was built in 1828 by attorney Thomas Swann.1 Swann was born in Charles County, Maryland, and in 1787 he moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where he studied law, married Jane Byrd Page, and started a family.
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Olympian Wilma Rudolph Visits the White House
Wilma Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. As a child, she suffered from several serious illnesses, including pneumonia, polio, and scarlet fever. She wore a leg brace until the age of nine. After recovering the use of her leg, Rudolph turned to sports. She excelled at basketball in high school, earning an All-American designation and setting a
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"Running Against the World"
The 1936 Summer Olympics were unlike any other. In Berlin, Germany, under the shadow of Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, an African-American track and field athlete rose to stardom: Jesse Owens.1 Owens’s record-breaking athleticism carried him from the cotton fields of the South to the White House and made him one of the most famous athletes in American history. Jame
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The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C.
The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington D.C. was founded in 1802, shortly after Washington D.C. became the federal seat of government.1 For Baptists in early America, religious liberty was a pillar of the faith, but one that did not fully extend to enslaved persons and free Black people within Baptist congregations. As a church just north
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The History of Lafayette Park
Today, Lafayette Park sits just north of the White House, enclosed by H Street NW (north), Madison Place (east), Pennsylvania Avenue (south), and Jackson Place (west). This seven-acre public park is named after the famous French Revolutionary War hero, the Marquis de Lafayette. It has served as a graveyard, construction site, market, public space, and neighborhood throughout its 200-year history.
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NAACP and the White House
The Board of Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) met with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House on June 24, 1964. The forty-five minute meeting took place in the Cabinet Room of the West Wing.1 The meeting was off the record, so no official press coverage or documentation of the conversation exists. However, White
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Scholarship
Decatur House Silhouettes
Through research and analysis of written accounts, letters, newspapers, memoirs, census records, architecture, and oral histories, historians, museum professionals, and descendants seek to restore the voices of enslaved people. Although it is possible to construct certain details of an enslaved person’s life, it is often difficult to know about their physical appearance because it is extraordinarily rare to find im