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Title: Obama: ‘We’re the Slaves Who Built the White House’
Source:
The Weekly Standard
URL Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs ... -built-white-house_879207.html
Published: Mar 8, 2015
Author: Daniel Halper
Post Date: 2015-03-08 10:28:56 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 2549
Comments: 7
President Obama, speaking today in Selma on the 50th anniversary of the historical Bloody Sunday march: "Look at our history. We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, and entrepreneurs and hucksters. That’s our spirit. That’s who we are. "We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and then some. And we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That is our character. "We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free –- Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We’re the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because we want our kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be. (Applause.) "We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. (Applause.) We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened up the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights. "We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent. And we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, and the Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied. "We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge. (Applause.) "We are storytellers, writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told. "We’re the inventors of gospel and jazz and blues, bluegrass and country, and hip-hop and rock and roll, and our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom. "We are Jackie Robinson, enduring scorn and spiked cleats and pitches coming straight to his head, and stealing home in the World Series anyway. (Applause.) "We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.” "That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others. (Applause.) We respect the past, but we don’t pine for the past. We don’t fear the future; we grab for it. America is not some fragile thing. We are large, in the words of Whitman, containing multitudes. We are boisterous and diverse and full of energy, perpetually young in spirit. That’s why someone like John Lewis at the ripe old age of 25 could lead a mighty march." Here's the full speech:
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#2. To: cranky (#0)
The White House was built by a combination of slaves, freed slaves and white immigrant labor. Of course, the original White House was burned in 1814 by the British during the War of 1812. It was reduced in the blaze to just the exterior walls remaining, most of them so damaged that they had to be torn down as well, leaving only the old sandstone foundations remaining. Tellingly, there is little mention of slave labor or freed slave labor in rebuilding the Capitol and WH in 1815. Apparently, much of the slave labor involved in the original construction was in quarrying sandstone at a distant site. The fire left only the foundations intact and sound so there was far less demand for slave labor when the WH was completely rebuilt, beginning in 1815. A watercolor of the shell of the White House following the British arson in 1815:
#5. To: TooConservative (#2)
Nice touch (the whip drawn in above the roof)...
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestTitle: Obama: ‘We’re the Slaves Who Built the White House’
The main residence, as well as foundations of the house, were built largely by enslaved and free African-American laborers, as well as employed Europeans.[14] Much of the other work on the house was performed by immigrants, many not yet with citizenship. The sandstone walls were erected by Scottish immigrants, employed by Hoban,[15] as were the high-relief rose and garland decorations above the north entrance and the "fish scale" pattern beneath the pediments of the window hoods. 
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