Several years ago, regarding an earlier book by author Jonathan W. White, I wrote: “Without a doubt White is in the vanguard of young historians whose work brings a different, but vitally significant view of (historical) activities and events.”
That also applies to his newest book, “A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 288 pgs., $26).
Rather than describing those enslaved African Americans who physically constructed the building, White documents the experiences of those Blacks whose first meetings with the “Great Emancipator.”
Lincoln, as depicted through White’s research, “graciously welcomed” a group of Black ministers into the White House in 1862. Afterwards he began inviting African Americans from ex-slaves to Abolitionists into his home. “This was really a drastic change, unprecedented,” explained White in a recent telephone interview.
Succeeding presidents, however, failed to continue the practice — as evidenced by national uproar in 1901 when President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, author of “Up from Slavery” and later founder of Tuskegee Institute, to dine, White related.
Researching for seven years, the associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News found about 125 letters from African Americans to Lincoln along with assorted newspapers, books and diary references of Black individuals who visited Lincoln at the Executive Mansion.
White acknowledged that it is a surprising story that people haven’t examined before. There are several well-known meetings of Lincoln with Abolitionists and church leaders, but White found how common it was for African Americans to come to the Lincoln White House, like other white citizens who merely came to the White House “and asked to see the president.”
“Other than stonemasons, laborers, craftsmen, cooks and domestic servants, African Americans were rarely welcomed within the great building’s walls” in the presidential years before Lincoln, who welcomed all visitors on Tuesday’s and Fridays.
Reaction by many white publications to Blacks visiting Lincoln were inevitably against such action.
For example, Lincoln gave an audience and held a consultation with a delegation “of Negros at the White House” on August 8, 1862, according to the New York Caucasian, as reprinted in the St. Mary’s Beacon, Leonard Town, Maryland. “Great Virginians of other days”—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—would have reacted with “horror” and “overwhelming disgust” should they have seen Lincoln talking to “darkies in the Mansion house of the people,” White quoted.
Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth visited the president on several occasions each.
After one meeting Douglas said, “I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man than in that of Abraham Lincoln… I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man — one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt.”
Before meeting Lincoln, Douglas chastised the president for all kinds of actions doubting he would be an anti-slavery president, White’s narrative explained.
In the years after Lincoln’s assassination, Douglas would proclaim that Lincoln was “emphatically the Black man’s President: the first to show any respect for their rights as men.”
___
“Who Dung It?”
Robert Archibald has “dung” it again!
If you will accept the premise that detective George Wilcox was reincarnated as a dung beetle then you will enjoy his new murder mystery, “Who Dung it” (Blue Fortune Enterprises LLC, 280 pgs., $17.99).
The fourth book by Archibald since his retirement after 41 years on the faculty of the College of William & Mary, lastly as professor of economics and public policy, this tome also could possibly qualify as part of the science-fiction genre, but that may be too much of an extension.
Nevertheless, the novel is well written, has an engaging plot and takes the reader through an ever-changing narrative, even if it is with a dung beetle.
Judy Clayton, a travel writer visiting Africa, encounters George, the beetle, who discovers she is from his old hometown. Now if he can get Judy’s help and return to Cleveland maybe he will be able to solve all the mysteries.
But how can he readily communicate. Ultimately, it is through a lap-top with George sitting on keys spelling his words. Judy doesn’t need the keyboard she can communicate just by talking.
So, everything is now set. It’s on to Cleveland and their detective work.
___
Buildings abandoned and often forgotten
Joel Handwerk, photographer and writer from Richmond, has put together an interesting collection of abandoned buildings around Richmond and its extended environs.
“Abandoned Virginia: The Forgotten Commonweath” (Fonthill Media: America Through Time, 96 pgs., $23.99) brings together a brief narrative about each building along with evocative color photographs that takes you into the realms of decay and ruin.
“Some of these buildings have been destroyed since being photographed,” he wrote. “Others have been renovated and put back to use again. But most of them are relatively unchanged, aside from being a little more weathered or surrounded by taller undergrowth.”
For example, there are dramatic photographs of the old Art Deco Central National Bank skyscraper on Broad Street in Richmond that after years of neglect now has been repurposed as a fashionable apartment building.
Likewise, the Southern Biscuit Building in Richmond is depicted in ruins as an abandoned cookie plant before it, too, became a new apartment complex.
This is a keepsake of times past!
Have a comment or suggestion for Kale? Contact him at Kaleonbooks95@gmail.com
