Dear Teathuglikkklan jackasses:
From 2005: Capitol Slave Labor Studied
The U.S. Capitol was built with the labor of slaves who cut the logs, laid the stones and baked the bricks. Two centuries later, Congress has decided the world should know about this.
Congressional leaders yesterday announced the creation of a task force to study the history of slave labor in the construction of the Capitol and suggest how it can best be commemorated.
“It is our hope that the work of the task force will shed light on this part of our history, the building of our nation’s greatest symbol of democracy,” said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican; and Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
Historians say slaves were the largest labor pool when Congress in 1790 decided to create a new national capital along the Potomac surrounded by the two slave-owning states of Maryland and Virginia.
Over the next decade, local farmers rented out their slaves for an average of $55 a year to help build the Capitol, the White House, the Treasury Department and the streets laid out by city planner Pierre L’Enfant.
Slaves cut trees on the hill where the Capitol would stand, cleared stumps from the new streets, worked in the stone quarries where sandstone was cut and assisted the masons laying stone for the walls of the new homes of Congress and the president.
They also were involved in the expansion of the Capitol in the late 1850s.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas Democrat and a task force member, said lawmakers became aware of the use of slaves after researchers in the late 1990s found documents of Treasury Department payments to slave owners. She said more than 400 slaves apparently were hired out.
In 2000, Mrs. Lincoln and Sen. Spencer Abraham, Michigan Republican, Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat, and Rep. J.C. Watts Jr., Oklahoma Republican, pushed through legislation approving the formation of a task force.
But Mrs. Lincoln said that because of changes in control of the Senate, it has taken until now to implement that legislation. “It’s certainly long overdue,” she said. “The task force will have a great opportunity to bring forward basically a history lesson as well as an appropriate memorial.”
Mr. Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement, said the opening of a Capitol visitors’ center next year might provide a venue for recognizing the slaves. “We need to find someplace not only to place a statue or appropriate symbol, we also need to find a way to tell their story,” he said.
In 2011, Congress passed the following resolution:
Whereas enslaved African-Americans provided labor essential to the construction of the United States Capitol;
Whereas the report of the Architect of the Capitol entitled `History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol’ documents the role of slave labor in the construction of the Capitol;
Whereas enslaved African-Americans performed the backbreaking work of quarrying the stone which comprised many of the floors, walls, and columns of the Capitol;
Whereas enslaved African-Americans also participated in other facets of construction of the Capitol, including carpentry, masonry, carting, rafting, roofing, plastering, glazing, painting, and sawing;
Whereas the marble columns in the Old Senate Chamber and the sandstone walls of the East Front corridor remain as the lasting legacies of the enslaved African-Americans who worked the quarries;
Whereas slave-quarried stones from the remnants of the original Capitol walls can be found in Rock Creek Park in the District of Columbia;
Whereas the Statue of Freedom now atop the Capitol dome could not have been cast without the pivotal intervention of Philip Reid, an enslaved African-American foundry worker who deciphered the puzzle of how to separate the 5-piece plaster model for casting when all others failed;
Whereas the great hall of the Capitol Visitor Center was named Emancipation Hall to help acknowledge the work of the slave laborers who built the Capitol;
Whereas no narrative on the construction of the Capitol that does not include the contribution of enslaved African-Americans can fully and accurately reflect its history;
Whereas recognition of the contributions of enslaved African-Americans brings to all Americans an understanding of the continuing evolution of our representative democracy; and
Whereas a marker dedicated to the enslaved African-Americans who helped to build the Capitol will reflect the charge of the Capitol Visitor Center to teach visitors about Congress and its development
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),
SECTION 1. PLACEMENT OF MARKER IN CAPITOL VISITOR CENTER TO ACKNOWLEDGE ROLE OF SLAVE LABOR IN CONSTRUCTION OF CAPITOL.
(a) Procurement and Placement of Marker- The Architect of the Capitol, subject to the approval of the Committee on House Administration of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate, shall design, procure, and place in a prominent location in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center a marker which acknowledges the role that slave labor played in the construction of the United States Capitol.
(b) Criteria for Design of Marker- In developing the design for the marker required under subsection (a), the Architect of the Capitol–
(1) shall take into consideration the recommendations developed by the Slave Labor Task Force Working Group;
(2) shall, to the greatest extent practicable, ensure that the marker includes stone which was quarried by slaves in the construction of the Capitol; and
(3) shall ensure that the marker includes a plaque or inscription which describes the purpose of the marker.