1848: A Death in the Capitol (Part Two)

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Congressional Cemetery, death and funeral, John Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, state funerals, Thomas Benton, William Seward

(Click for Part 1 of this post.)

–by Ronald M. Johnson

Adams (Library of Congress)

The death of John Quincy Adams occurred just as the first telegraph links between major Eastern cities had been established. Word of his collapse on the floor of the House of Representatives, and his death two days later, spread rapidly throughout this section of the nation and along the first lines just opened to the west. The new technology helped produce, as Harlow Giles Unger observed, “a universal outpouring of grief” and broadened the immediate sense of mourning Americans felt over a loss of a great national figure. Fittingly, a former President who had always sponsored the scientific advance of knowledge was now honored in death through the use of an invention that dramatically had expanded public awareness of events as they occurred throughout the nation.

The state funeral staged in memory of Adams and then the procession to Congressional Cemetery took place on 26 February 1848. The events of that day were both “solemn” and “imposing,” as recalled by William Henry Seward, later a U.S. senator from New York and biographer of Adams. The parade to the graveyard, which commenced upon conclusion of the midday service in the House of Representatives, had special resonance given Adams’ prior visits to the cemetery. During his long years of service in the U.S. government, he had participated in many processions to Congressional Cemetery. It was appropriate that he was remembered in an elaborate parade to the same site, even if it was only to be a temporary stay.

The procession had many remarkable features, complete with military units, members of the House and Senate, President Polk and his cabinet, the Supreme Court, representatives of civil organizations, and the general public. At the center of the procession was the catafalque with the body of Adams, accompanied by twelve pallbearers. Perhaps the most intriguing pair of pallbearers was John Calhoun and Thomas Benton. Calhoun, a slave owner, had long been on the opposite aisle in Congress from Adams, but the two had remained friends. Calhoun must have had complicated emotions as he accompanied the body of John Adams to the graveyard. As for Thomas Benton, a moderate on the issue of slavery, opposing both its abolition or extension, he had stressed preserving the union among states. Like Calhoun, he was a long-time political opponent of the deceased. He had agreed, however, to deliver a speech seconding a motion in the Senate to honor Adams but later recalled his personal struggle in praising a politician he had so consistently opposed.

Upon reaching Congressional Cemetery, the body of John Quincy Adams was placed in the Public Vault, where it stayed for approximately one week. On 5 March 1848, the Adams family and a select group of Congressmen oversaw the delivery of Adams’ remains to the train station located on the mall just west of the Capitol, and then accompanied the body of the former president on a five-day, five-hundred-mile journey to Quincy for burial there. The train stopped at both large and small towns along the way, where waiting crowds paid their final respects. In the countryside, the cortege passed through long lines of people standing silently with bowed heads.

The state funeral of John Quincy Adams was staged by Congress as part of an evolving tradition that stretched back to the death George Washington. The first U.S. President had been buried on the grounds of Mt. Vernon after a private funeral conducted according to Masonic rites. The format of private funerals for his successors continued through the 1830s. Earlier, however, in 1812 and 1814, Congress had held state funerals and processions for Vice Presidents George Clinton and Elbridge Gerry. Those two ceremonies created a model that would be in place in 1841 for the funeral and burial of William Henry Harrison and, seven years later, Adams. In 1850, Congress held a similar state funeral and burial for Zachary Taylor. Thus, fifteen years before the greatest of all presidential funerals following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Congress had established a tradition of state funerals and processions that remains in place today.

Works Cited
1. Information on the founding of the telegraph and the role Congress played in advancing its development can be accessed on-line at http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/telegraph.htm

2. For more details of the Adams funeral and procession see Lynn Hudson Parsons, “The ‘Splendid Pageant’: Observations on the Death of John Quincy Adams,” The New England Quarterly 53 (December 1980), 464-482.

3. The history of U. S. presidential funeral processions is most recently studied in Abby Arthur Johnson and Ronald Maberry Johnson, In the Shadow of the United States Capitol: Congressional Cemetery and the Memory of the Nation (New Academia Publishing, 2012), 80-94.

More information
Congressional Cemetery’s website includes a page with collected newspaper accounts of Adams’ stroke, death, and funeral procession.

Adams the Poet

Tags

John Quincy Adams, poetry

While we await the next installment of Ronald Johnson’s piece on the death of John Quincy Adams, let’s ponder the fact that Adams was a poet as well as a statesman. In fact, he once noted that, “Could I have chosen my own genius and condition, I would have made myself a great poet.” (1)

Leaving aside for a moment the question of the relative merits of his poetry, consider this piece Adams wrote about the timepiece in the House chamber. As far as I can tell, it was likely published as part of another collection in the years before his death and was also included in a volume of his collected works, edited by Senators Thomas Hart Benton and John Davis, published shortly after his death.

TO THE SUN-DIAL
Under the Window of the Hall of the House
of Representatives of the United States

Thou silent herald of Time’s silent flight!
Say could’st thou speak, what warning voice were thine?
Shade, who canst only show how others shine!
Dark, sullen witness of resplendent light
In day’s broad glare, and when the noontide bright
Of laughing fortune sheds the ray divine,
Thy ready favor cheers us–but decline
the clouds of morning and the gloom of night.
Yet are thy counsels faithful, just, and wise;
They bid us seize the moments as they pass–
Snatch the retrieveless sunbeam as it flies,
Nor lose one sand of life’s revolving glass–
Aspiring still, with energy sublime,
By virtuous deeds to give eternity to Time.

Given that we are examining Adams’ death and burial on this blog, it seems appropriate that he urges readers to “seize” each moment and aspire to “virtuous deeds.” The outpouring of grief that followed his death, as well as his strong presence in our sense of our history, certainly suggests that Adams followed his own bidding. Was he also challenging his fellow Members of Congress to do the same, to operate according to their own consciences and for the betterment of the nation and humanity? How do you think he would judge Congress through the years? What do you think Adams was getting at in this poem?

Notes
(1) Paul C. Nagel. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life (New York, Knopf: 1997), 231.

Sources
The Library of Congress has a section devoted to presidential poets, including a page on John Quincy Adams.

Adams, John Quincy. Thomas Hart Benton and John Davis, eds. Poems of Religion and Society (New York, William H. Graham, 1848), 38.

George Washington’s Brush with Death (Part 2)

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anthrax, First Congress, George Washington, James Madison, Ralph Izard, Washington's illness 1789

Part 1 of this piece on George Washington’s mysterious 1789 illness.

–by William diGiacomantonio

Hand-colored Currier & Ives lithograph depicting Washington’s reception in Trenton as he traveled to NYC in 1789 to take the presidential oath. (Library of Congress)

One of Smith’s fellow Representatives—also named Smith, but from South Carolina, and evidently better connected—provided a more detailed description of the malady the same day. (The reading is not for the faint of heart.)

[Washington] was lying extremely ill in bed—it was not known at the time, but we have been since informed told, that he was in some danger—I had a long conversation yesterday with his Doctor [Samuel Bard], who informed me that the President had been troubled with a Bile on his Seat, which had been so inflamed by his riding on horseback as to grow into an Imposthume as large as my two fists—this occasioned a fever of a threatening nature—it was apprehended that it would turn into a malignant fever one & the Doctor sat up with him one night—the fever however abated & the Imposthume has been opened.  (833)

The President was “out of all danger,” Smith assured his correspondent, “but will be prevented for some time from sitting up.” A week after the boil had been suppurated, Washington was getting around with crutches (886), and by the end of July he was “so far recovered that he has rode out, & again attends his levee & receives company.” (1215-16)

Eighteenth-century medicine had hardly yet progressed beyond the Middle Ages. The type of fever that matches the descriptions of Washington’s illness was fully capable of carrying off men even more robust than he, so contemporaries were not unnecessarily alarmist in fearing a fatal outcome. But even more noteworthy than their regret for the sake of the man was their lament for the sake of the country. Carolina’s Smith was “in hopes that before his death, a number of questions will be settled, the discussion of which under his Successor would give rise to parties & factions.” (833)

In a confidential dispatch to Versailles, the French Ambassador considered the President’s early departure as worse than the country’s having no bureaucratic apparatus whatsoever: added to “the singular spectacle of a Government without courts, without treasury, without army and without Ministers,” Washington’s brush with death

was a momentary disturbance as the prospect of a more unusual event presented itself, should the confederation lose its chief before being able to consolidate. Because in fact the political edifice of the United States is as yet barely prepared to set its foundation. (882-83)

Only after Washington had started down the road of a promising recovery could Smith of Carolina’s father in law, Senator Ralph Izard, finally bring himself to admit the unthinkable: “it would have been a dreadful calamity at this critical time, if he had died.” (849) Representative James Madison agreed, in nearly the same words: “His death at the present moment would have brought on another crisis in our affairs.” (853) No one knew the ramifications of Washington’s death better than Madison who, during those first six months in the House of Representatives, was perhaps the closest that any congressman has come to serving as a sort of Prime Minister to an American head of state.

Because of his closeness to the crisis, no one was more candid—or clinical—in naming the threat than Madison. In a letter to Jefferson, who was still far away in Paris, Madison described the boil as a “large anthrax on the upper end of his thigh.” (894) The diagnosis was that of Washington’s personal physician at the time, but the disease unfortunately has all too contemporary a relevance to modern congressional history. If Dr. Bard’s diagnosis was correct, the ulcerous legion was probably caused by a toxic spore from an infected animal or animal product to which his patient may have been exposed through a cut or abrasion—such as Washington, an avid horseback rider, would have been prone to precisely at the site of his infection.

Presidential life didn’t seem to agree with Washington’s immune system: early the next year he was laid low again, and even more gravely, by an especially rabid case of influenza. He survived that too, of course. But by then his contemporaries had already reconciled themselves with the very real possibility that the Constitution might not outlive the first President to serve under it. Instead, we are into the third decade of the third century of the American Presidency—the first centennial of which was celebrated by Washington’s 22^nd successor in office, none other than William Henry Harrison’s grandson, Benjamin Harrison.

Note: all quotes are from Charlene Bickford et al., The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789-1791 (20 vols. to date; Baltimore, 1972-), volume 16.

George Washington’s Brush with Death (Part 1)

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First Congress, George Washington, John Tyler, Washington's illness 1789, William Henry Harrison, William Smith

Editor’s Note: Welcome to another new contributor, William diGiacomantonio, who recently joined the USCHS staff. Look for the second part of this piece tomorrow, on George Washington’s actual birthday.

–by William diGiacomantonio

On this Washington’s Birthday, let us remember a brief moment when he risked leaving the historical stage before imparting his invaluable imprint on the office of the Presidency.

Everyone knows the story of William Henry Harrison’s truncated Presidency of 1841: he gave his Inaugural Address in a very Washingtonian “wintry mix,” got sick, and died a month later. (Not incidentally, the Address was all of two hours long—the longest in American history. Being the only President who was also the son of a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps Harrison thought he ought to be held to a higher standard.) In fact, Harrison did not develop his fatal pneumonia until three weeks after his inauguration, but the myth has survived—perhaps as a warning to equally reckless presidential speechifying.

The most important Constitutional legacy of Harrison’s presidency was the identity of his successor. John Tyler was the first Vice President to test the Constitution’s vague provision for presidential succession, and by his actions under Article II, section 1, paragraph 6, decided once and for all that the Vice President would fill the office and not merely perform the duties of president (leaving the actual office technically vacant). Although dubbed “His Accidency” by detractors, Tyler succeeded in providing the first transition of power following the death or incapacity of a president.

By the time this important precedent was set, the federal government under the Constitution had fifty years of momentum behind it. Failure to outlive the constitutional crisis of 1841, while not an option, was not much of a threat either. Much more threatening, not merely to the Presidency but to the very existence of the United States itself, was the crisis that occurred in the early summer of 1789, when the Constitution’s duration was being measured not in decades, but in weeks.

The First Federal Congress as depicted by Allyn Cox in the Capitol’s Cox Corridors. (Architect of the Capitol)

The First Federal Congress had inaugurated George Washington as the first President of the United States barely six weeks earlier. The temporary capital of New York City was not as salubrious as some (especially rival Philadelphians) might have wished, but it was not a specifically urban illness that laid the President low in the second week of June. If anything, he was more likely exposed to the near-fatal bacterial spores back on his plantation at Mount Vernon.

The first inkling that all was not well was documented about 15 June—coincidentally, the fourteenth anniversary of Washington’s appointment as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. He had survived eight years of war, only to be “indisposed” by a mysterious ailment that, as yet, resulted in nothing more inconvenient than the cancellation of the President’s weekly levee [reception]. Within a few days, there were reports of a recovery, but a recovery tenuous enough to leave Representative William Smith (MD) to speculate privately on the disastrous implications of the alternative: “were we to be deprived of his influence,” Smith wrote his son-in-law, “I much fear no other man could hold us together.” (816)  A full week after the public’s first knowledge of the President’s condition, Smith elaborated on their “Anxious Suspence”:

Although not generaly known, his disorder has been a fever which at present is apprehended, will terminate in a large Boil on his thigh, & will be lanced to day or tomorrow & expected to carry off his disorder, for which all ranks & degrees I believe most sincerely pray. (830)

Tune in tomorrow to learn more about the cause of this mysterious fever.

Note: all quotes are from Charlene Bickford et al., The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789-1791 (20 vols. to date; Baltimore, 1972-), volume 16.

1848: A Death in the Capitol (Part One)

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Currier & Ives, death in the US Capitol, death of Adams, John Quincy Adamas

–by Ronald M. Johnson

This blog post is about a shocking moment in time, an event for those who experienced it that must have remained with them for years to come. The story is so moving that today a plaque marks the spot where it occurred, the location noted by each tour guide as they lead visitors through the old House chamber in the United States Capitol. We are referring to February 21, 1848, when in the midst of debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke and collapsed. His colleagues carefully moved him to the nearby Speaker’s room, where he remained for two days, passing away in the early evening hours of February 23. Three days later, the former United States Senator, Secretary of State, President of the United States, and nine-term member of the House was honored with a state funeral and temporarily buried in Congressional Cemetery, then serving as the national burial ground.

Recounted many times by his biographers and historians, the event still resonates as if it had happened yesterday. In recently published commentary, historian Harlow Giles Unger reflected on the death of Adams and his remarkable career as a statesman. Also one of Adams’ many biographers, Unger wrote in The Wall Street Journal on September 26, 2012 that “John Quincy Adams died on the floor of the House of Representatives fighting for the rights of his countrymen, and, in a universal outpouring of grief, Americans mourned as they had not done since the deaths of Washington and Franklin.”

At the time, newspaper accounts and later the famous Currier & Ives lithograph of the dying Adams, surrounded by stunned House members, provided riveting text and imagery to the American public. In the February 22, 1848 issue of The National Intelligencer, the event was vividly described. Apparently in good health upon arrival at the Capitol that morning, Adams had just voted “in an unusually distinct and emphatic manner” when a colleague shouted “Mr. Adams is dying!”  The account continued with the testimony of an unidentified witness: “Turning our eyes to the spot, we beheld the venerable man in the act of falling over the left arm of his chair, while his right arm was extended, grasping his desk for support.”

Currier & Ives depiction of death of John Quincy Adams. (Library of Congress)

Taken to the small room used by the Speaker, Adams recovered enough to utter “This is the end of earth: I am composed,” though the exact wording remains in dispute. He died, having never been moved, the next day just after 7:00 pm. The Currier & Ives lithograph (above), now in the public domain and accessible for viewing online at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, circulated widely in the months that followed.

The dramatic scene of Adams collapsing at his desk remains the most remembered death in the halls of Congress, but it is far from the only such event, as noted by politicalgraveyard.com in “Politicians: Death in the U.S. Capitol Building.” Adams was the third member of Congress to die at the Capitol, following Senator Francis Malbone in 1809 and Congressman Thomas Tyler Bouldin in 1834. Since 1848, thirteen other members of Congress have died in the building, the most recent being Hjalmar Carl Nygaard, a Congressman from North Dakota, in 1963. None of the other deaths, tragic as any such death is, involved an individual of the stature of Adams or engendered a similarly enormous public response.

The state funeral and temporary burial of Adams at Congressional Cemetery is yet another part of what happened during these dark days of February 1848. The context for the funeral, held in the House, and the procession to the burial ground was part of a larger ceremonial development that stretched back to the death and burial of George Washington. We’ll examine this part of the story in a separate piece on February 26.

Works Cited:

1. Harlow Giles Unger, “What John Quincy Adams Tells Us About One-Term Presidents,” The Wall Street Journal (September 26, 2013), on-line version accessible at http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/09/26/what-john-quincy-adams-tells-us-about-one-term-presidents/  Unger is also the author of John Quincy Adams (Da Capo Press, 2012), the most recently published biography of Adams.

2. Abby Arthur Johnson and Ronald Maberry Johnson, In the Shadow of the United States Capitol: Congressional Cemetery and the Memory of the Nation (New Academia Publishing, 2012), p. 84.

3. Information on all sixteen members of Congress who died in the United States Capitol can be accessed at http://politicalgraveyard.com/death/us-capitol.html At this time, the list remains incomplete, leaving open the possibility that others may be added in the future.

Honoring Rosa Parks

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John Conyers, lie in honor, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks

Editor’s note: February 4 marked the centennial of Rosa Park’s birth.

–by Sarah Lewis

Many of us are familiar with the name Rosa Parks yet unfamiliar with her continued efforts to end segregation.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her mother was an Alabama school teacher and greatly valued education. Rosa eventually married Raymond Parks and they went on to become respected residents of Montgomery, Alabama, where she worked as a seamstress. At that time, Montgomery was governed by Jim Crow laws, which dictated which schools African Americans could attend, which water fountains they could drink from, and even which books they could read from the “black only” library. Rosa became the chapter secretary for the NAACP in December 1943.

Parks is fingerprinted after being arrested. (AP photo, Library of Congress)

Over ten years later, Rosa was commuting home on a Montgomery bus that was often avoided by black residents due to the demeaning “Negroes-in-back” policy. The segregation laws at the time stated that front seats were reserved for white citizens, while the seats behind them were designated for black citizens. What many people don’t realize is that at the time Montgomery had contradicting laws on segregation. One law stated that segregation must be enforced at all times while another law stated that no person of any color could be asked to give up their seat even if there were no remaining seats on the bus. Parks was asked to give up her seat when a white citizen boarded the bus and no additional “white seats” were available. She refused and was taken into police custody shortly after. In Parks’ autobiography she writes, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in”.

On December 5, 1955 Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws while black citizens of Montgomery Alabama boycotted all local buses. Over 35,000 flyers were distributed the evening before the trial to alert citizens to the boycott, which led to an even greater movement. Taking advantage of the boycott’s momentum, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed, with Dr. Martin Luther King elected as the group’s president. With the boycott came rage and violence, but this violence did not deter boycotters; it instead raised interest in both the national and international press. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional, helping make Rosa Parks “the mother of the civil rights movement.”

In the years following the boycott, Parks and her husband decided to move to Detroit, where she was an administrative aide for Rep. John Conyers, Jr. until her retirement in 1988. During this time, Parks also co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development as a youth outreach program. She spent time traveling to attend civil-rights events and received a Congressional Gold Medal.

Parks lays in honor in the Rotunda. (NBC/Reuters)

After her death in 2005, Parks was honored by Congress and became the first woman in history to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. Congress has also commissioned a statue of her for its collections; it will be dedicated this month in National Statuary Hall.

Sources:
History Channel
Architect of the Capitol

Abraham Lincoln and the Capitol Dome

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, Capitol dome, Construction of the Capitol, John Eaton

To commemorate Lincoln’s birthday this year, let’s take a look at the story of the 16^th President’s involvement with the construction of the Capitol dome. This is especially significant in this year that is the 150^th anniversary of the Dome, which was crowned with the Statue of Freedom in 1863.

In fact it was in 1863 that an important episode in Lincoln’s involvement with the Dome took place. From a single conversation that year, not reported until four decades later, sprang the story that has gained legendary status that Lincoln ordered the construction of the Dome to continue during the war.

Mural by Allyn Cox in the U.S. Capitol depicts Lincoln and Capitol Architect Thomas U. Walter viewing construction of the Dome. (Architect of the Capitol)

The facts tell a different story, but one that is nonetheless compelling and significant. The 1863 conversation about the Dome was reported in the memoirs of John Eaton, published in 1907 (Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen: Reminiscences of the Civil War with Special Reference to the Work for the Contrabands and Freedom of the Mississippi Valley by John Eaton in collaboration with Ethel Osgood Mason [New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907], p. 89). John Eaton (1829-1906) was chaplain of the 27^th Ohio. In November 1862 Gen. U.S. Grant appointed him to supervise the large numbers of African-American refugees in Tennessee and Arkansas. After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Grant sent Eaton to Washington with a letter of introduction to Lincoln to make a report on the condition of the refugees. Eaton refers to his meeting with Lincoln in his memoirs and provides the following recollection of Lincoln’s attitude toward the construction of the Dome:

After the President had been questioning me for some time, he quickly turned the conversation one side, as if he realized the severity of his catechism, and asked me what I had seen since my arrival in the city. I reported a visit to the Capitol, then in process of construction, whereupon Mr. Lincoln asked what the workmen were doing. I told him that they were about to raise the body of the statue of Liberty to the dome, and that on the Senate wing they were preparing the pillars for installation. The President remarked that there were some people who thought the work on the Capitol ought to stop on account of the war, people who begrudged the expenditure, and the detention of the workmen from the army. He went on to say that in his judgment the finishing of the Capitol would be a symbol to the Nation of the preservation of the Union. “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.” He expressed his belief in the final triumph of the Union cause. There would be reverses and much bloodshed, but finally the Union army, he felt assured, would be victorious.

Lincoln was not alone in his belief that the Dome was a powerful symbol of Union. The poet Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse in the nation’s capital tending wounded soldiers, recorded similar sentiments. On March 1, 1865, he noted: “To-night I have been wandering awhile in the capitol, which is all lit up. The illuminated rotunda looks fine. I like to stand aside and look a long, long while, up at the dome; it comforts me somehow.” Lincoln had once referred to the United States and its experiment in representative self-government as “the last best hope of earth.” The construction of the Dome was to the people of Lincoln and Whitman’s generation a reassuring symbol of that hope.

Oscar Stanton De Priest

Tags

African American History Month, Arthur Mitchell, Congressional wives tea, Lou Hoover, Nicholas Longworth, Oscar Stanton De Priest, segregation in the Capitol

On Wednesday, February 13, the U.S. Capitol Society will present its annual African American History Month lecture in Washington, DC. This year, Historian of the House of Representatives Matthew Wasniewski will discuss the life and career of Chicago politician and Member of Congress Oscar Stanton De Priest, the only black Member of Congress when he was elected and the first from the North. We’ll leave it to Dr. Wasniewski to dig into the details; instead, here are a few interesting tidbits about De Priest’s time in Congress and Washington.

*When the 71st Congress arrived in Washington in April 1929, the House took the oath of office en masse for the first time. Speaker Nicholas Longworth altered the tradition of swearing in Members by state delegation in large part to prevent any challenges to the legality of De Priest’s seating. After a few varied years, in 1937 the en masse oath-taking became standard.

De Priest in May 1929 (Library of Congress)

*First Lady Lou Hoover invited De Priest’s wife, Jessie, to a tea for congressional wives. The invitation provoked national discussion and outrage from many, but Hoover navigated the rocky shoals of race and segregation carefully; the reception was broken up into several sections, and Jessie De Priest attended the smallest event of four. (The White House Historical Association has much more on this topic.) Oscar De Priest challenged the conventions of segregation in several areas of the Capitol as well, including the House’s public restaurant.

*De Priest won several re-election campaigns, but lost in 1934 to another African American politician, Democrat Arthur Mitchell. It was an unusual campaign because both candidates were black; Mitchell became the first black Democrat in Congress.

Want to learn more? The noon lecture on Wednesday is free and open to the public, but we do ask that you pre-register. You can find more information on our website. For more about De Priest, read his profile based on Black Americans in Congress 1870-2007, or this House Historical Highlight on De Priest’s challenge of segregation in the House dining room.

Black History Month and the Legacy of Carter G. Woodson

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African American History, ASAALH, Black History Month, Carter Woodson, Negro History Week

Editor’s note: Welcome to new contributor Ronald M. Johnson, Georgetown University professor and author.

–by Ronald M. Johnson

This month finds us celebrating the eighty-seventh anniversary of the founding of Black History Month, an event first staged in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson. Initially called Negro History Week and held in February to honor the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, that original week has evolved into a month of activities that increase knowledge of and insight into the historic black experience. The longevity and success of this effort has made it a model for others seeking to honor their particular American cultural traditions. Irish-American Heritage Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, and Jewish Heritage Month, among many others, suggest that Woodson’s original effort has had a much wider application than he could have imagined at the time.

With its roots in slavery, however, black history is unique among efforts at studying the American past. For that reason, Carter Woodson is a unique figure among American historians. Born in 1875 in rural Virginia, his parents had been slaves before the Civil War. As historian and Woodson biographer Jacqueline Goggin has noted, “Woodson was profoundly affected by his family’s history; it is probably not an overstatement to say that he was compelled to become a historian to reveal to the world the truths about the African American past. His social origins, as the only professionally trained historian whose parents themselves had experienced slavery, not only influenced his decision to become a historian, they also were bound up with his identity as an African American historian.”

Woodson (Library of Congress)

Eager to overcome the effects of slavery, Woodson took steps to gain an education. He pursued his studies with vigor as a youngster and never let up, eventually earning two undergraduate degrees, a M.A.from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from Harvard (the second African American to do so after William E. B. DuBois) before moving to the District of Columbia to teach in the public schools. After several years of teaching and administration, and frustrated by the overt white racism of his day, Woodson began an organization dedicated to educating the broader public about black history and culture.

Founded in 1915, and known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, it continues to fulfill the mandate that Woodson envisioned nearly a century ago.  To advance the work of the new group, he next founded the first scholarly journal in the United States dedicated to the study of black history. Today the Journal of African American History, now in its 97th year of publication, serves scholars and graduate students as an outlet for publishing their research. In addition, the ASAALH initiated a wide variety of publications designed to help in the teaching of history in the school systems of the country. Ten years after founding the new journal, Woodson moved to broaden the educational mission of the organization by establishing a week-long series of talks, panels, and ceremonies that would reach beyond the black population to the larger American public.

The founding of Negro History Week emerged, in part, as a tribute to two men: one a slave who gained his freedom and the other a white man who lost his life in the struggle to end slavery. Woodson saw the lives of both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln as critical to achieving the goals of the new effort: the former for his self-reliance, search for knowledge, and political activism and the latter for personal sacrifice, national honor, and a vision of a society without racial restraints. For Woodson, the week of honoring African American history would work to enlighten all Americans about the struggles faced by blacks over the years of slavery and segregation. The effort was designed to fight racism on the front-lines, in the schools, neighborhoods, and communities across the nation.

A long time passed before the kind of awareness he had sought began to emerge. The turning point arrived in 1976 when President Gerald Ford became the first chief executive to issue proclamations honoring Woodson’s legacy. By then, stimulated by black student calls for expanding the event to a full month, the event had taken on new significance. The proclamation acknowledged that African Americans had faced difficult challenges throughout their history and now were now to be recognized for overcoming the many barriers they had encountered. As a result, for the first time, Black History Month became a nationally recognized event. Since then, including the vote in 1986 by Congress to officially designate the event with a federal statute, the month of February has provided an ongoing platform for honoring the history of black America, especially the Civil Rights movement and the transformation in race relations that have occurred over the past half century.

Today some question whether the setting aside of a period of time to focus on African American history has lost its relevance in multicultural America. In 2005, black actor Morgan Freeman told CBS interviewer Mike Wallace that he found the idea of Black History Month “ridiculous” and called for ending the annual event. Others have said as much, arguing that contemporary society no longer requires such events. Not everyone, however, is in agreement with that viewpoint.

More recently, writer Raina Kelley noted that the purpose of the event remains relevant in today’s America. “For Black History Month to once again seem culturally relevant,” she wrote, “part of its time must be spent asking why there are still so many negative portrayals of black people in our culture—we can’t just spend all 28 days talking about the nice ones. And rather than wasting time bemoaning the existence of Black History Month, why don’t we use it to proselytize for the issues that need to be more fully covered and understood the other 337 days of the year—such as failing inner-city public schools, institutionalized poverty, health-care disparities, and job discrimination?”

Even as questions about its viability are raised, Black History Month appears alive and well. All across the nation, in schools and communities, the month of February provides venues for discourse and learning. Here on Capitol Hill, there are lectures, exhibitions, and concerts, open to both staff and the general public, which honor the heritage of African Americans. All of this is a testimony to the original vision of Carter G. Woodson that the nation needed to honor and study the historic black experience as an integral part of the larger American effort to create a better and more open society.

 Works Cited

1. The Jacqueline Goggin quote was found in her introduction to “A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Papers of Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1915-1950″ (University Publications of America, 1999), p. v. She also authored Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1997).

2. The Morgan Freeman interview, which aired on 60 Minutes on February 2, 2010, can be viewed at http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1131418n

3. Raina Kelley’s comments appeared in the January 18, 2010 issue of Newsweek.

The Unknown Laborers of the U.S. Capitol

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Capitol built by slaves, Capitol Visitor Center, Emancipation Hall, Slave Labor Commemorative Marker

–by Sarah Lewis

While exploring the Capitol, it’s easy to be distracted by the marvelous statues of all the men and women that we recognize as cornerstones of our history, but what about those who laid the cornerstones of our nation’s Capitol? We don’t see them…and no one knows them well. It is for this reason that a sandstone marker was dedicated in the Capitol Visitor Center: to honor those enslaved laborers who built our Capitol one stone at a time, but whose names we do not know and whose statues we do not see.

The sandstone memorial (Architect of the Capitol)

During her speech at the dedication of the Capitol Visitor Center on December 2, 2008, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “The Capitol was built by slaves…this Capitol Visitors Center is ready for 2009…the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator.” There is astonishingly little known of the enslaved laborers who constructed the Capitol, mostly because early record-keepers were indifferent to common laborers, so records concerning them are incomplete.

In 2005, Congress appointed a task force specifically to research this subject. While it was unable to identify many of the slaves who would have begun their work in 1793, the task force reported that slaves were involved in all aspects of the Capitol’s construction, from carpentry and masonry to glazing and painting, and especially the labor-intensive sawing of logs and stones. Life would have been lonely and bleak for these slaves, many residing in rural Virginia, as they worked from sunrise to sunset.

The sandstone marker was taken from the Capitol’s East Front portico and placed in the Visitor Center after legislation passed calling for a marker to recognize the contributions of enslaved laborers. At its 2012 dedication, Pelosi further remarked, “For too long the sacrifice of men and women who built this temple of democracy were overlooked; their toil forgotten; their story ignored or denied, and their voices silenced in the pages of history.”

The inscription reads:

THIS SANDSTONE WAS ORIGINALLY PART OF THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL’S EAST FRONT, CONSTRUCTED IN 18-24-1826. IT WAS QUARRIED BY LABORERS, INCLUDING ENSLAVED AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND COMMEMORATES THEIR IMPORTANT ROLE IN BUILDING THE CAPITOL.

The sandstone marker serves as a memorial of respect for these silenced laborers.

Editor’s note: Former USCHS staffer and 2013 Capitol Fellow Felicia Bell did significant research on the enslaved laborers who built the Capitol. We hope to feature some of her work in the future.

Sources/for more information:
The slave labor report and info about the sandstone marker

Tampa Bay Time article

Article about the marker’s dedication