Why did you lead your forward with that . Jesse part of the reason why i got into writing about africanamerican history in washington, d. C. Was because of barack obama and his campaign. There was a lot of interest in African American history, having the first africanamerican president in the white house. I was lucky enough to be assigned by the Associated Press to cover obama that weekend. I remember pulling up to the obamas townhouse in chicago thinking about what book will i write next. And right at that spot is when it hit me. I got so excited about the topic and so i immediately called my editor. She immediately tamped down my enthusiasm and told me to think about it. To make sure that i had a really good idea about what i wanted to do. Brian what was the idea . Jesse the idea was to write a story about the africanamerican slaves who lived inside the white house. Back then, the country was still talking about how great and how unique it would be if an africanamerican president lived inside the white house. I said to myself, i understand that would be great but he cannot have been the first africanamerican to live there. And then the thought process went on so who were the first africanamericans to live there . We knew there were africanamerican butlers but i thought there had to be someone before them. I decided to write a book about the africanamerican slaves that lived inside the white house with the first president s and that is when the invisibles the untold story of African American slaves in the white house got its start. Brian we have an artist rendering of the first president s house in new york city. You say in your book that there were nine slaves working for George Washington inside that building. Explain how that happens. Jesse as most people know, George Washington did not live inside the white house. He lived inside executive residences in new york city and philadelphia. When this Country First started, congress did not provide funds for butlers and maids and watch washer women. It did not provide funds for domestic staff inside the white house. The president s either had to come out of their own pocket and pay for these staffers or they had to bring in their slaves from their plantations. The majority of the first president s and the Founding Fathers who became president were all slave owners. They would bring in their slaves from the plantations. Washington did this as well. He brought slaves to new york city and philadelphia from mount vernon. He brought them to new york city and philadelphia. In both of those places, today we would consider them to be nonslaveholding states but back then, slavery was allowed in both pennsylvania and new york city. George washington took advantage of that to bring slaves from mount vernon up to new york. Brian you tell a story about the machinations they went through to keep the slaves in the president s house. Jesse when of the rules in pennsylvania at that time was that any slaveowner who brought a slave across the state lines and into pennsylvania and kept them there in six months, after six months had passed, those slaves automatically became free. George washington is no dummy. He does not want to keep bringing people from out vernon to philadelphia, have them for six months and then have them walk away with compensation. What washington did was every five months and a couple of weeks, he would decide to take his household fact to mount vernon. And then, they would turn around and go back to pennsylvania starting the sixmonth clock all over again. He did this over and over during his time in pennsylvania to ensure that the slaves would not be freed. None of his slaves were dummies. They knew what he was doing at this point. That is why one of his slaves took this opportunity to actually escape from George Washington. Her name was oney judge. She was Martha Washingtons personal slave. She had been with the washingtons her entire life. She was born into slavery with the washingtons. And she had been with them her entire life. As the president s term was winding down, oney judge saw that if she ever stepped back onto mount vernon she would never escape. While the washington were packing up and getting ready to go back to mount vernon, oney judge was packing her own things. One day, as a washingtons were eating dinner, she walked out the back door. She walked down to the wharf and sailed away. It took a couple of days for the washingtons to realize you not been packing to go back to virginia, she was packing to escape. But she actually made it up to the northeast where she would live out the rest of her life without ever having to go back to virginia. It is not that the washingtons did not want her back. George washington actually put advertisements in newspapers trying to get people to find oney judge. He sent a couple of relatives, i wont call them slave catchers. He sent them to the area where he thought she had escaped to to see if they could find her. One of them found her. However, by that point, oney judge was enough apart part of that community where the community decided that they would warn her in advance and let her get away before the slave catchers showed up. She got to live the rest of her life out as a free woman. Brian how much was a slave worth in the George Washington era . Jesse it depends on who the sleep was. Most slaves were bought as children. If you were going out to buy a slave come at you had a choice. You could buy a slave as a child or by a fully grown slave or something in between. The money amount would depend on what exactly you want. For most house slaves who served as maids or valets, you would likely buy a younger one so you could train them. William lee was bought as a young child specifically to serve as a valet for George Washington. In todays money, it would be about five dollars. If fully grown slave, they could go for much, much more. Someone who is a cook, like the hemmings family with thomas jefferson. If someone was buying a fully grown slave who was trained in french cuisine, they would be much more. For a lot of the president s, they either inherited their slaves or they bought them as children to work inside the white house. That way they knew what the slave was taught to do because they taught the slaves themselves. Brian what kind of contract was there . Jesse it depends on where you bought them from. A lot of slaves in the president ial households, they ended up being the sons and daughters of previous slaves. A lot of the slaves that were used inside the white house were not bought, they had grown up on their plantations. When they did go out and buy slaves, the contracts would typically say slave x is being purchased by slaveowner a from slaveowner b. As we went through the records, and i had a lot of help going through the archives, when we went back and looked through some of the records, there were very few president s who actually bought slaves while inside the white house. Andrew jackson actually was one of the few who did and john tyler did as well. Andrew jackson did it openly. He needed some extra help inside the white house to help the household run correctly so he bought Gracie Bradley. Here in washington, d. C. Interestingly, gracies sister actually worked inside the white house as well but as a free woman. She wanted her sister to work in the white house as well and she recommended to Andrew Jackson that he go purchase her and he did. Gracie bradley turned out to be he bought her is like a cook, but it turns out that Gracie Bradley and sub the the best that Gracie Bradley ends up being the best seamstress that anyone had seen in that area and she became the master seamstress in the hermitage in tennessee. She ended up living out her whole life with the Jackson Family because her sister wanted her closer to her in the white house. Other president s, like john tyler did not want people to know that they were buying slaves. When you get to tyler, you are getting closer and closer to the civil war. They did not want people to know what they were doing. Tyler would go out and hire a middleman who would go out and buy slaves and then transfer the slaves to tyler. Tyler was so adamant that no one would know what he was doing, but he refused to use any of the money that he was being paid as president to buy those slaves. He did it out of his personal funds. President s have had all different types of ways to get slaves into their hands. Some wanted people to know that they were doing it and some did not. Brian they all had different ways. A lot of stories in the book, george w the white house with the obamas with the unveiling of his portrait and see what that triggers in your research. [video clip] president bush when the british burned the white house in 1814, Dolly Madison famously saved this portrait of the first george w. Now, michelle if anything happens, there is your man. Mrs. Obama i promise you i promise. I am going straight for it. And i am sure it will be closer, and i will get right to it. Brian what are you thinking . Jesse one of the Great Stories is that Dolly Madison comes and saves the portrait of George Washington. I dont think that is exactly what happened because one of the great things i found out, was paul jennings. Paul jennings was one of the first slaves, he was one of the first people to write a tellall memoir about the white house. Dolly madison and her story about her saving that portrait of George Washington in the white house when the british came to burn it he said that is not exactly what happened even though it was a great story that Dolly Madison told. But it was not exactly what happened. According to mr. Jennings, Dolly Madison did not have anything to do with saving that painting. He and a couple of other workers inside the white house were the ones that came and pulled that painting off the wall, put it in a wagon and shipped it away. There are some people who would argue that given his relationship with the madison and i will say that his relationship with them was not the best because they broke several promises to him. But a lot of people say that his account of what happened with that painting is probably more trustworthy than Dolly Madisons account. I tend to believe mr. Jennings, because, you know, he actually wrote his down and put it in his book. Like i said, it was one of the first memoirs written about white house lights and probably one of the first books written by a slave that got published inside the united states. Brian you can read it online. Jesse you can read it anywhere. It is a great look. I tend to believe him but i will say he had a reason to hold a grudge against the madison because James Madison had told him before he died that he was going to be freed. After James Madison died, he goes over to Dolly Madisons hands and at this point, Dolly Madison is running out of money. She is destitute. Instead of following her husbands wishes to free his slaves after he died, she starts selling them. One of the few she kept there at the end was paul jennings. He expected her to follow president madisons wishes and free him but she never did. I will say that he did have a reason to hold a grudge against her but i still tend to think his story is true. Now, luckily for him, he ends up being sold to daniel webster. Who eventually frees him. For him, the story ends up ok in the end. But, he was no fan of the modest madisons, and especially Dolly Madison. I can see he probably got a little bit of pleasure in poking a hole in the story that she was becoming more famous for. Brian i want to put on the screen a list of president s who had slaves at any time. 12 out of 18 had slaves at some point in their lives. While they were in office. George washington, thomas munroe, Andrew Jackson. John tyler, james polk, and zachary taylor. Those that owned slaves but not while they were in the white house included mark been pure in, Andrew Johnson, and ulysses grant. Who had the most slaves . Jesse washington, jefferson, and maybe taylor had the most. Keep in mind, both monticello and mount vernon were huge moneymaking plantations. I would tend to bet, and both washington and jefferson had in the hundreds at some point in their lives. I would tend to guess that one two would be the largest slave owners. It is hard to count at any one point because keep in mind, that when you are owning a slave family, the slaves are also having children. Those numbers would fluctuate up and down. Still, even with that, i would expect it would be either washington or jefferson. Brian you tell stories about slaves, not a service of president s that literally slept in the room with them. Can you remember one in particular . Jesse go back to william lee who was the body servant of George Washington. Everywhere that George Washington went, you would find billy lee. It is probably safe to say, the beyond Phyllis Wheatley at that time, billy lee was probably the most famous africanamerican in all of america. You did not find George Washington during the revolutionary war without billy lee. When general cornwallis surrendered, washington and lee were there together. During the revolutionary war, billy lees job was to make sure that George Washington had everything he needed. Whether it was a horse, a telescope, a gun, to run messages. Billy lee was basically washingtons number two. One story i found especially interesting, a group of southerners and a group of northerners looking ahead to the civil war years in advance got into an argument in a revolutionary war camp. Billy lee and washington hear about this argument which is about to break out into a fight. And washington grabs his horse that billy lee brings him and he gallops into the middle of the argument. Right there behind him is billy lee on his horse. Even when all of these battles are going on and George Washington is out there, billy lee is right there next to him. If something happened to washingtons horse, billy lee would have to give him his horse and follow along on his feet. When washington woke up in the morning, billy lee was there. When he went to bed at night, it was his job to take off the wig and the clothing. Make sure that washington had the food he needed and the bible. It was his job, he was basically washingtons number two, to make ,ure that everything around him washington did not have to think about it. Washington up with was a chart. Its not like it was easy. As we go on in history, we find people like washingtons grandson, who ends up being a relative of robert lee. He ends up saying that billy lee was probably the second best horseman in the country behind George Washington simply because he had to be to keep up with him. When you Start Talking about body servants, these were the men who were entrusted with the daytoday care and keeping of the president. They got their clothing. They got their wigs. They made sure that they got to bed at night. They made sure they got up in the morning. Most of them lived in the same room with the president. Brian you were telling a story in front of one of our cameras back in 2010. Years ago on a book you wrote called black men built the the capital. I want you to see this. [video clip] jesse once the lees had left arlington house, the union forces crossed the potomac and took over the land. One Union General decided he never wanted robert e lee to ever return to arlington house. The way he ensured that this would not happen was he began burying union and confederate soldiers in Robert E Lees front yard. That is how Arlington National cemetery got started. Another way they tried to ensure that general lee would never return was that they gave part of the plantation to some of his freed slaves. What these freed slaves did with the land was come up with a town called Freeman Village. As you can see, it was not exactly small. They had their own churches. They had their own schools. They even had their own hospital. We have even been able to find a photograph of the people of Freeman Village in the national archives. Brian that is where the cemetery took over Freeman Village. Brian the cemetery is Freeman Village. What happened to all of the free blacks . Jesse eventually, even though Freeman Village was the city unto itself, it brought in people from all around. Even Sojourner Truth ended up living there for awhile. Eventually, the view they had from that hill, people discovered it and they were kicked off of the land and it became part of it was returned to the custis state and it became Arlington National cemetery. So now, where friedmans village stood before is part of Arlington National cemetery. There is no trace of the city left. One of the things i have discovered since i gave that talk, one of the churches that was in freedmans village called the old bell church i was out doing a talk and a woman came up to me at the end and said that her church had that bell. It moved from fre