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Government · est. 1792

The White House

The President's House was built largely by enslaved laborers hired from area slaveholders in the 1790s.

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The District commissioners, short of free labor, used enslaved people — more than 200 known individuals — to quarry stone and raise the walls of the Executive Mansion. The White House Historical Association now documents their work and names many of them.

Documentation

The web

Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.

  • built by·Thread
    Chattel Slavery

    More than 200 enslaved people built the President's House.