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Easter Egg Roll: Easter and the Cleveland East Room
In the beginning, children came into the White House with baskets of brightly dyed hard-boiled eggs. On Easter Monday, 1885, young egg rollers marched into the East Room, hoping for a personal audience with President Grover Cleveland. When he came down from his office to greet them, he was charmed. These visitors ruined the East Room carpet, which, as the Washington
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Easter Egg Roll: The President's Own Comes Marching In
Eleven years after the Easter Monday egg rolling festivities came to the White House, President Benjamin Harrison scored a hit by adding music to the affair. In 1889, he had the United States Marine Band, known as "The President's Own," play lively tunes while the children romped on the South Lawn. John Philip Sousa, who directed the band, took delight in
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Easter Egg Roll: The First Families' Role
Once the White House was opened to public egg rolling festivities in 1878, first families had to decide whether they were going to join the throng of celebrants or just organize and play host to it. Previously, the South Lawn was reserved for their own private Eastertide activities. Now the grounds represented a famous rite of spring for the nation's capital.
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Easter Egg Roll: Bunnies and Other Easter Animals
First pets are a popular attraction at the White House Egg Roll. Canine attendees of the event have included a wide variety of beloved purebreds and mutts. Animals as diverse as President Benjamin Harrison's toy pony, First Lady Grace Coolidge's raccoon and the 1,200-pound steer brought in by the Carters for their petting zoo have appeared on the South Lawn
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Easter Egg Roll: Years Without an Easter Monday
The egg roll holds such an important place in White House history that no president wants to be known for canceling it. World War I and food rationing stopped the event from being hosted at the White House. In 1942, egg rollers were sent back to the Capitol grounds, the place from which they had been ousted 66 years before. World War
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Easter Egg Roll: Fanfare and Keepsakes
Over the years, White House egg roll events have been made memorable by new attractions. In 1993, the Clintons scaled back the fanfare so that children would remember the day for its egg rolling games. A generation earlier, First Lady Pat Nixon gave out certificates of participation as a souvenir to eggrollers. First Ladies Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter distributed plastic
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Easter Egg Roll: Games, Old and New
The primary Easter Monday entertainment at the White House has always involved egg rolling. Participants roll dyed, hard-boiled eggs across the grass to see whose will go the furthest before cracking. Other egg sports enjoyed in the early years were egg ball, toss and catch, egg croquet and egg picking—a contest where eggs are pecked together until they crack. Af
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Easter Egg Roll: The Holiday Bustle and Hustle
As the Easter Monday event became more of an attraction, a rule was fixed to limit the number of people coming into the enclosed South Lawn. The rule stated that a "grown person would be admitted only when accompanied by a child" and vice versa. As a result, unescorted egg rollers and childless adults began teaming up at random so
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1862 Emancipation Petitions
The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln “Civil War Washington” website has posted the 1862 Emancipation Petitions, providing widespread access to these primary documents. To meet the requirements of the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862, slave owners filed a petition with the District government that stated their loyalty to the Union, listed the number and
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19th Century White House Staff
For most of the 19th century, the structure of the White House staff remained generally the same. At the top was the steward, a federal employee who was bonded; the Congress created this position to safeguard the silver and furnishings in the house. The steward was on the government payroll. He functioned as the manager of the house. The job
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Colin Powell
On August 10, 1989, President Bush announced his appointment of General Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell became the architect of Operation Desert Shield, a staging operation that moved American and international forces and materials to the Middle East to launch Operation Desert Storm. As President Bush’s trusted advisor, Powell helped shape a global alliance that ex
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E. Frederic Morrow at the White House
E. Frederic Morrow was the first African American to serve in an executive position on a president’s staff at the White House. Morrow was a minister’s son who had graduated from Bowdoin College and was employed by the National Urban League and the NAACP before entering Army service during World War II. After the war, he obtained a law