Every time I view that scrawny, rag-tag bunch of rioting marauders attempting to destroy the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, the history-lover in me gets a bit of anxiety about an unrelated story to the insurrection.
Did you know that African Americans – enslaved and formerly enslaved people — were a major labor force in the construction of the Capitol?
George Washington and the founding fathers had planned to hire cheap labor from Europe to construct the majestic D.C. government buildings on the drawing boards.
But the call overseas for laborers got a basic yawn.
So, the nation’s first government leaders turned to free labor right under their noses: enslaved African workers. And then there was that cheapest force for back-breaking work: African American freedmen.
The first major part of the monumental job was of Capitol building was clearing the land that was called Jenkins Hill of trees, rocks, and debris. The seat of government was to be built on land in the slave states of Virginia and Maryland. And in fact, enslaved men were hauled off by the wagonload to the government stone quarry in Aquia, Virginia for training as stonemasons.
One of the enslaved men was a standout. When it came time to raise the 19-foot-tall bronze statue to the top of the Capitol building, it was a Black man, Philip Reid, that became the hero of this complicated construction feat.
Previously untrained in construction and engineering, it was Reid who figured out how to use a contraption of hoists and pulleys to get the larger-than-life-size bronze statue in its lofty place. Wonder how this enslaved Black man must have felt about the Capitol Building’s crowning glory being called the Statue of Freedom?
The Emancipation Proclamation made Reid a free man by the time the Capitol building was completed. But imagine his reflections on the job from start to finish.
In 2012, a plaque was installed in the East Wing of the Capitol Building to commemorate the African American tradesmen and stonemasons — enslaved and free — that gave us such a beautifully spectacular seat of government.
How disgusting — even sacrilegious — it was that the January 6th mob of vandals so maliciously smashed windows and trashed the furnishings they didn’t steal outright. And then in the ultimate acts of disrespect, many of them are guilty of lowlife acts you won’t hear much about it on the news. The critters emptied bladders and bowels to gleefully desecrate the hallowed halls of the Capitol. The Capitol cleaning crew had to be quickly assembled in this historically unprecedented emergency.
It would not surprise you that today’s Capitol custodial/janitorial crew is made up primarily of African Americans.
Imagine what the ghosts of Philip Reid and the African American workforce constructing the Capitol Building would think of the disgustingly unsanitary, putrid, and monumental mess left by the January 6th insurrectionists.
Perhaps, Reid and crew would not be surprised at all that the malevolent mob of miscreants that answered Trump’s call would hold today’s African American population in as much contempt as the Secessionist slaveholders did 200 years ago.
Julius Hunter has contributed to broadcast and print journalism, civic involvement and education since he became St. Louis’ first African American TV anchor in 1970.
