Don't be upset that the First Lady told you the White House was built by slaves.

[kpete]

Be upset your textbook didn't.
https://twitter.com/deannaraybourn/status/758010670327533568

[Scuba]

1. K & effing-R!

[SunSeeker]

2. Wait, are people disputing this fact?!

[niyad]

8. indeed they are. check out loofah boy, for one.

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. Here's what I find so absurd about this whole thing;

They live in basically a museum, complete with curators and historians.

Is anyone with any brains really surprised that the First Lady actually knows some history about the building? That she never had one single conversation with someone on the staff who has knowledge of the mansion?

What a fucking tempest in a teapot

[yallerdawg]

4. Bill O'Reilly -- noted historian:

“Slaves did participate in the construction of the White House. Records show about 400 payments made to slave masters between 1795 and 1801. In addition, free blacks, whites and immigrants also worked on the massive building,” O’Reilly said.

He continued, “Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802; however, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor. So Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House, but there were others working as well.”

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/bill-oreilly-slaves-who-built-white-house-were-well-fed-w431154

[progressoid]

6. "noted historian"

Good god. What have we come to when we have to use a television blow as a historian.

[yallerdawg]

7. That was my "sarcasm" emoji.

You know Bill-O and his minions consider him an accomplished author of historical books?

"Killing Reagan," "Killing Patton," "Killing Jesus," "Killing Kennedy," "Killing Lincoln."

Where's Al Franken when we need him?

[progressoid]

11. My brother actually reads those damn books. And enjoys them!

I read a few pages of Killing Lincoln. I thought I was reading something for Jr. High School kids.

[TomCADem]

10. O'Reilly - Also Give Credit to the Slavemasters...

...because the slaves did not whip themselves?

Give it to O'Reilly to give a shout out to the slave owners.

[yallerdawg]

14. "...well fed..." is his take on White House slavery.

I had surfed over to see if Fox News was even carrying the DNC, and caught Bill-O saying this, and then it went to the next show, Trump's good friend Megyn Kelly.

I went back to C-SPAN and streaming - I hadn't considered it all that controversial considering the source, forgot about it until I saw this OP!

[Ilsa]

27. I guess O'Lielly forgot to mention that

the slaves worked, but their owners were the ones who got paid while they had no choice in any of it.

[yallerdawg]

28. If he was a sports commentator...

his ass would have been fired this morning!

[xocet]

18. It matters. The present is built on the foundations of the past. Inequality and injustice persist.

It is important that people are made aware of what has happened and how those occurrences are affecting the present. This is so that they can see why various societal/legal structures need to be changed. Otherwise, it is difficult to get them on board with the changes that are necessary to eliminate persisting inequalities and injustices as they do not see the root causes of the persisting structural problems.

[xocet]

20. Feel free to elaborate....

[jtuck004]

21. You may have to add the :sarcasm: smiley. Sometimes it doesn't come across as easily on

the Internet, since you don't have the verbal, visual, and auditory cues we have when talking with most folks.

Especially here. Some of these folks are so good they can send a post back that disagrees with you faster than you can post the OP that starts it.

[ananda]

9. The truth should not upset anyone.

Slavery and native genocide are very shameful chapters
in our history.

It does no good to try to minimize or revise them. We
need the lessons and the spiritual growth to make lives
better NOW!

[xocet]

12. K & R! n/t

[spanone]

13. K&R...

[Waldorf]

15. It was just not slaves, but others as well.

"The slaves joined a work force that included local white laborers and artisans from Maryland and Virginia, as well as immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and other European nations."

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/questions/did-slaves-build-the-white-house

[Glassunion]

29. Indeed, however that was not the point she was making and irrelivent to her topic

[awoke_in_2003]

31. And your point is?

Just because other people worked on building the WH does not dismiss that fact that slave labor was used.

[LittleGirl]

16. In the 60s, I did learn this

but was reminded when I read Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States. That book should be required reading for all high school US history students.

[rocktivity]

17. The White House Historical Association has a web page devoted to the question

"Did slaves build the White House?"

"Construction on the president's house began in 1792 in Washington, D.C., a new capital situated in a sparsely settled region far from a major population center. The decision to place the capital on land ceded by two slave states -- Virginia and Maryland -- ultimately influenced the acquisition of laborers to construct its public buildings.

"The D.C. commissioners, charged by Congress with building the new city under the direction of the president, initially planned to import workers from Europe to meet their labor needs. However, response to recruitment was dismal and soon they turned to African American(s) — enslaved and free — to provide the bulk of labor that built the White House, the United States Capitol, and other early government buildings."

A stonemason, Collen Williamson, "trained enslaved people on the spot at the government's quarry at Aquia, Va.," the group wrote. "Enslaved people quarried and cut the rough stone that was later dressed and laid by Scottish masons to erect the walls of the president's house. The slaves joined a workforce that included local white laborers and artisans from Maryland and Virginia, as well as immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and other European nations."

link

rocktivity

[SalviaBlue]

22. I recently visited a relative with a 10 year old.

I saw in his stack of school books, a history book for kids by Rush Limbaugh.

[HeartoftheMidwest]

25. Are you referring to....

...THE acclaimed Professor of History, Dr. Limbaugh????
I believe he did his postdoctoral work at Harvard under the distinguished professor and department chair, Dr. Wm. O'Reilly?

[SalviaBlue]

30. I'm sure this poor kid will be reading O'Really's version of history next.

[CTyankee]

32. Um, professor Limbaugh was a college dropout...and proudly so, I might add...

you might want to call him "self-edumacted."

[HeartoftheMidwest]

23. Without the involuntary ( mostly ) labor of slaves, our country would NEVER have...

...been built up as quickly or as prosperously as it had. Just a fact, that those unaware of, should know.

"Blacks and whites worked alongside one another in skilled labor positions in both antebellum and postbellum years, and in the late-19th century especially, the two segments of the population competed for skilled employment.[6],[7] Regardless of this competition, however, African Americans remained important as artisans because stigma and lower wages made white workers reluctant to vie for positions blacks already occupied; therefore, African Americans were the predominant building tradesmen throughout the late-19th and early-20th centuries.[8]"
https://www.preservationsociety.org/blog/2016/02/29/black-craftsmen-and-the-built-environment/

An older academic text stated that because the growth of colonial America was so fast, and the skilled labor pool was so small, that it became "necessary" (sic) to import slaves and teach them the skills desperately needed, although many Africans had great skills already in woodworking, textiles, and crafting in gold, ivory, and tin.
The readily available land for settlement was so vast, that few white men, immigrant or indentured, wanted to stay in the trades for long.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/slavery/JNH-1947.pdf

That the White House ( such irony ) was built mostly with black blood and sweat is an indisputable fact of history.

[kimbutgar]

24. I went to the Smithsonian museum in DC and saw a display where they stated slaves built

the Whitehouse. They had historical documents stating this. Now the right wing says the Smithsonian museums are wrong?

[fleabiscuit]

26. +1 K&R