Black Hands, White House Slave Labor and the Making of America
by Kathy Grear 02/27/2023
Black Hands, White House documents and appraises the role enslaved women and men played in building the US, both its physical and its fiscal infrastructure. The book highlights the material commodities produced by enslaved communities during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These commodities–namely tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton, among others–enriched European and US economies; contributed to the material and monetary wealth of the nation’s founding fathers, other early European immigrants, and their descendants; and bolstered the wealth of present-day companies founded during the American slave era. Critical to this study are also examples of enslaved laborers’ role in building Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Subsequently, their labor also constructed the nation’s capital city, Federal City (later renamed Washington, DC), its seats of governance–the White House and US Capitol–and other federal sites and memorials.
Given the enslaved community’s contribution to the US, this work questions the absence of memorials on the National Mall that honor enslaved, Black-bodied people. Harrison argues that such monuments are necessary to redress the nation’s historical disregard of Black people and America’s role in their forced migration, violent subjugation, and free labor. The erection of monuments commissioned by the US government would publicly demonstrate the government’s admission of the US’s historical role in slavery and human-harm, and acknowledgment of the karmic debt owed to these first Black-bodied builders of America.
Black Hands, White House appeals to those interested in exploring how nation-building and selective memory, American patriotism and hypocrisy, racial superiority and mythmaking are embedded in US origins and monuments, as well as in other memorials throughout the transatlantic European world. Such a study is necessary, as it adds significantly to the burgeoning and in-depth conversation on racial disparity, race relations, history-making, reparations, and monument erection and removal.
Biography
Renee K. Harrison is an Associate Professor of African American and U.S. Religious History at Howard University. She joined the School of Divinity faculty in the fall of 2010.
Dr. Harrison‘s research interests include an interdisciplinary and interfaith approach to African American religious history and culture; early American religious history; black feminist/womanist thought; aesthetic theory and the arts; phenomenology; and rituals of healing and resistance.
Harrison is the recipient of awards, grants, and fellowships. She is co-facilitator with Dean Yolanda Pierce of the Community, Spirituality, and The Arts Series at HUSD.
Harrison earned her Bachelor of Arts from California State University Northridge; Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Religious Education (with honors) from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia; and Ph.D. in Religion with an interdisciplinary concentration in history, feminist/womanist thought, African American studies, and philosophy from Emory University.
She is the author of Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Engaged Teaching in Theology and Religion, co-author with Dr. Jennie Knight, University of Virginia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Harrison’s most recent publication, Black Hands, White House: Slave Labor and the Making of America, is set for release by Fortress Press this November. Black Hands, White House documents and appraises the role enslaved women, men, and children played in building the US, its physical and fiscal infrastructure. The work highlights the material commodities produced by enslaved communities during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These commodities—namely, cotton, tobacco, sugar, among others—enriched European and US economies, contributed to the material and monetary wealth of the nation’s founding fathers and other early European immigrants and their descendants and bolstered the wealth of present-day companies founded during the American slave era. Black Hands also examines the role enslaved laborers played in building the infrastructure of the nation’s capital and its federal buildings—White House, US Capitol, Department of the Treasury, Smithsonian Castle, and so forth. Given the enslaved community’s contribution to the US, this work calls for the erection of a stand-alone National Enslaved Labor Memorial Sanctuary on the National Mall honoring enslaved Black peoples’ sacrifice, labors, and contributions. Such a memorial, commissioned by the US government, could also serve as a public demonstration of the US government’s admission and role in slavery and human-harm and acknowledge the karmic debt owed to these first-Black-bodied builders of America.
A native of Los Angeles, California, Dr. Harrison is a retired 11-year veteran of the LAPD and the former executive director of A Leap of Faith Productions, a non-profit community-based theatre group in Los Angeles. She is an artist, poet, and playwright who loves loves loves teaching! She also enjoys spending her spare time researching and writing, walking on the beach, playing and watching tennis (no doubt Serena), viewing all things DuVernay and Rhimes, and traveling with her spouse Yolonda and pup Satchmo.
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