The Black History of the White House

by Clarence Lusane

  The most perplexing and frustrating of the presidents regarding race was John Quincy Adams. Although he was the progeny of the second president of the United States and his family had a long history of antislavery politics, during the four years of his presidency (1825–1829) the Adams White House did virtually nothing to address the ongoing misery of the country’s enslaved blacks. Instead, his administration focused on large infrastructure and commerce-related issues. Yet, after one relatively unsuccessful term as sixth president of the United States, in 1830 he returned to Congress, and his desk soon became a hub for antislavery proposals, petitions, and policies.

  In 1836, amid rising abolitionism and increasing slave uprisings, Southerners in the U.S. House of Representatives managed to pass a “gag rule” that automatically tabled any petition on slavery without consideration. This was actually a milder version of what the hard-liners really wanted—a rule that prevented anti-slavery petitions from being sent in the mail and indeed prevented Congress from dealing with antislavery petitions under any circumstances. Gag-rule proponents argued, incredibly, that petitions against slavery were unconstitutional and even treasonous. Virginia Congressman Henry Wise railed, “Sir, slavery is interwoven with our very political existence, is guaranteed by our Constitution, and its consequences must be borne by our northern brethren as resulting from our system of government, and they cannot attack the system of slavery without attacking the institutions of our country, our safety, and our welfare.”50 This twisted logic conveniently ignored the First Amendment to the Constitution, which unambiguously states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (Emphasis added.) Thus by passing the gag rule, it was the U.S. House of Representatives that was actually in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

  But legal exactitude was never really the point. It was about defending slavery and the political and economic power derived from it. President Adams opposed the gag rule and for nearly eight years used a succession of creative means to try to override it. While future White House commanders Van Buren, Polk, and Buchanan, with votes in mind, sought accommodation with the rule so as not to alienate Northern opponents or Southern supporters, Representative Adams aggressively introduced petitions at the beginning of every session, leading to long and divisive debates on the issue, the very opposite of what the gag rule sought to achieve. In one especially inventive tactic, Adams started a fight by asking if slaves could present a petition, pointing out that he was asking a question about the petitioners, not the petition itself. He followed that act of defiance by noting that the petition technically would be acceptable, because the presenters were petitioning for slavery not to be interfered with in Washington, D.C., and thus it was not a petition calling for interference in slavery as the gag rule stipulated.51 After five days of debate, a 224 to 18 vote decided that slaves could not submit petitions.52 It took eight long years for the gag rule to be eliminated, finally, in 1844.

  During this period Adams also made headlines due to his involvement in the Amistad affair. In July 1839, fifty-three captive blacks led by Cinque (Sengbe Pieh) rose up and seized the ship Amistad, which was taking them from Havana, Cuba, to Puerto Principe on another part of the island. They killed the ship’s crew and ordered the two surviving Spanish planters, José Ruiz and Pedro Montes, to take them to Africa. However, Ruiz and Montes deceptively sailed up the east coast of the United States, and the vessel was seized by the U.S. Navy and brought to Connecticut. A great deal of legal wrangling ensued involving the United States, Spain, and the planters in Cuba around issues of murder, kidnapping, ownership, and, most fundamentally, whether the abducted Africans should be freed. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Adams was brought in to present the case for the liberation of the Africans.

  In his detailed and wide-ranging presentation before the U.S. Supreme Court, Adams argued that the very arrest and detention of the Africans were illegal acts that amounted to grounds for dismissal of all charges. Employing decisions from the lower courts, letters from Secretary of State John Forsyth, international treaty agreements, and other evidence, he contended that there were no laws broken by the Africans, and that if anyone was guilty of a crime it was Ruiz and Montes, who were “in pursuit of that original unlawful intent of the slave trade” and who “brought the vessel by stratagem into a port of the United States,” thus violating the laws of the United States, Great Britain, and Spain. Adams forcefully argued that the “Negroes were free and had a right to assert their liberty” and under that principle alone should be liberated and allowed to be on their way.53 Eight days later, on March 9, 1841, the Africans won the case, and those who were still alive were set free.

  Throughout the crisis, the Van Buren White House acted on behalf of the Spanish government, which favored sending the Africans back to Cuba so as to continue their enslavement. Although the District Court had ordered President Van Buren to send them back to Africa as free individuals, he ordered the U.S. Attorney to appeal the decision. Reportedly, he and Secretary of State Forsyth had drawn up plans to secretly detain the Africans and pass them to the Spanish government if the Africans won their case. It was no wonder that Adams referred to Van Buren as “a northern President with southern principles.” They were likely unable to carry out the scheme due to the popular support that the Amistad captives had amassed.54 Adams also accused the Van Buren administration of falsifying legal documents in their effort to win the case.55

  During this period, the White House continued to exclude black people other than enslaved servants, and soon even that came to an end. According to the history section of the White House website,56 President James Buchanan had only white servants and workers at the White House during his one term as the fifteenth president of the United States. The only bachelor president, he meandered his way through his tenure unable or unwilling to address the multiple crises that were mounting over the expansion of slavery in the western territories, the Fugitive Slave Act, John Brown’s insurrection, and the rupture of the Democratic Party to which he belonged.

  Poster of Blind Tom.

  In fact, President Buchanan’s White House is notable for only one groundbreaking racial milestone: it extended the first invitation to a black person to perform on its premises. That summons went to Thomas “Blind Tom” Greene Bethune Wiggins.57

  Black Entertainment Comes to the White House

  The first African American to officially enter the White House who was not a servant or enslaved to the president was the musical genius popularly known as “Blind Tom.” Born sightless, from around the age of four he demonstrated astonishing skills, including the ability to reproduce on the piano music that he heard only once. He also came to write many original compositions, sang in a wide variety of languages, and eventually mastered several other instruments. Many of these skills he had achieved by the time he performed at the White House in 1860. He was eleven years old at the time.

  Unfortunately, the whites who controlled Wiggins presented him more as a sideshow freak than as the gifted artist he was. Few other nineteenth-century Americans were as misunderstood, misrepresented, and misinterpreted as Wiggins, whose musical brilliance belied white people’s narrow perspectives on the intelligence, talent, and creativity of people of color. Wiggins’s owners and guardians made enormous profit by marketing him as an oddity rather than as a serious musician. The man’s constant practice, rigid determination, innate talent, and gifted ear were ignored in favor of a Barnum & Bailey–like hype that portrayed him as a curiosity almost outside the human race. There is an abundance of evidence, however, indicating that Wiggins must be included among the greatest classical musicians of his or any other era.

  Despite pervasive segregation and white society’s effort to present music by blacks in the most degrading f
orms possible, dazzling black musicians and composers emerged, challenging bigoted notions of intelligence and artistic genius. Though well-documented studies demonstrate that African musical traditions crossed the waters and shaped the evolution of spirituals, blues, gospel, ragtime, jazz, and other early black musical genres in the United States, blacks also developed expertise in classical European music.

  The United States was home to a significant number of black classical musicians and composers prior to the Civil War. Francis B. “Frank” Johnson (1792–1844) was a composer who also played bugle, cornet, violin and other instruments, and was considered the “first major bandmaster in the U.S.” according to Lawrence University professor Dominique-René de Lerma.58 The details on his early musical training are scant, but by the time he was twenty he was a professional musician in Philadelphia. He wrote more than 300 compositions, and his band was so popular that it toured all over the United States, Canada, and Europe, performing in front of Victoria shortly before she was crowned Queen of England in 1838. It is believed that his band was the first group of African American musicians to tour Europe.

  Johnson’s work was not devoid of politics. He wrote compositions calling for the end of slavery, such as The Grave of the Slave, and in support of Haitian independence. He died at age fifty-two in 1844, leaving a strong legacy of work behind.59 Two hundred years after his birth, on July 22, 1992, New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato honored Francis B. Johnson in the U.S. Senate with this “Commemoration of a Musical Master”:

  Francis Johnson became an incomparable virtuoso violinist, flutist, hornist, natural and keyed (Kent) bugler. He became a master composer, arranger, and orchestrator of music; a music educator and a publisher of music; an accomplished equestrian, impresario, gourmet cook, and an astute businessman. Francis Johnson eked out an illustrious career in music by assuming many musical roles including: coffee-house performer, cavalry trumpeter, circus bandmaster, featured performer at balls and hops, bandmaster for early volunteer firefighters, bandmaster for the 128th Regiment, and more. In 1837 Francis Johnson took the first band of American musicians, the American Minstrels, to Europe where he met up with Johann Strauss and Philippe Musart. When Johnson returned to the States, he introduced America to the music of these two legends. . . . Frank Johnson is best remembered as progenitor of the Nation’s music of martial ardor, inventor of cotillions, a pioneer, and one of the earliest protagonists of American musical purism. He was a quintessential American musical phenomenon. I ask my colleagues to join me in remembering Francis “Frank” Johnson on the anniversary of his birth and always.60

  Another important black prewar composer was the teacher and guitarist Justin Holland (1819–1887). Although he was born in the slave state of Virginia, he and his parents were free. At fourteen, after his parents’ death, Holland moved to Massachusetts where he would begin studying classical guitar under the tutorship of composer William Shubert. He studied at Oberlin College in Ohio, eventually married, and settled in Cleveland, where he developed a national reputation for guitar composition and arrangement. In his effort to become more fluent in classical guitar, he also became fluent in Spanish, Italian, German, and French.61

  Holland led not only an active professional life, but an engaged political one as well. He was a leader in the National Negro Convention Movement, which began in the early 1830s and sought to create a national movement for black rights and freedom. Leading activists such as Frederick Douglass were involved.62 Holland also participated in the Underground Railroad, the clandestine network of people and sites that helped people escape from slavery. The Underground Railroad was very active in Ohio, and many freedom-seeking blacks that had made it there continued northward to Canada. Holland also viewed the struggle for black liberation as an international effort. He was secretary of a group called the Central American Land Company, which for a number of years attempted to buy land in Central America where free blacks could go and set up a colony.63

  If Johnson, Holland, and other black classical musicians and composers had been invited to perform at the White House, it would have served as an acknowledgment of African Americans’ contributions to classical music. However, it was Blind Tom who broke that racial barrier. His promotion as a freak of nature and musical sideshow concealed the fact that he was one of the country’s most talented and creative musicians and composers, black or white. Given the racist atmosphere of the times, it is not surprising that the first black musician and composer to perform at the White House—not counting whatever entertainment may have been provided by those who had been enslaved there—was cruelly victimized and exploited.

  Blind Tom was a musical prodigy in every sense of the word. There was little expectation that the child, born blind to two enslaved parents on May 25, 1849, would ever be a useful worker. In fact, when his father, Domingo Wiggins, and mother, Charity Greene, were sold to James Bethune, a local enslaver, he was sent with them at no extra cost. Thomas was eight months old at the time and “simply regarded as an encumbrance.”64 Shamelessly self-deluded, Bethune viewed himself as something of a savior and once wrote that slaves were “a class of laborers controlled not by government, for like children, it is too large for government to manage. This class of laborers are [sic] incapable of taking care of themselves, so are controlled by individuals who are not only capable of taking care of them but interested in doing so.”65 Bethune sought unconvincingly to present slave owners as nonracists, even antiracists, who were motivated by interests other than profit.

  According to Deirdre O’Connell, author of The Ballad of Blind Tom:

  After arriving at the Bethune Farm, things began to change and the toddler began to echo the sounds around him. If a rooster crowed, he made the same noise. If a bird sang, he would pursue it or attack his younger siblings just to hear them scream. . . . By the age of four, Tom could repeat conversations ten minutes in length, but expressed his own needs in whines and tugs. Unless constantly watched, he would escape: to the chicken coop, woods and finally to the piano in his master’s house, the sound of each note causing his young body to tremble in ecstasy. After a string of unwelcome visits, General Bethune finally recognized the stirrings of a musical prodigy in the raggedy slave child and installed him in the Big House where he underwent extensive tuition.66

  Thomas was eventually able to reproduce the difficult and harmonically complex forms of classical music. Within a short time, he was also composing original songs and improvising well beyond the capacity of anyone else in the Bethune household.

  Without question, the man was extraordinary. He was playing his own songs by the age of six, and by the time he was eight he was performing publicly and regularly for his enslaver. But it was his performance in October 1857, in a concert hall rented by James Bethune in Columbus, Georgia, that appears to have determined his musical destiny once and for all. Enslaved by Bethune, Thomas received none of the profits made by his music and was forced to perform whether he wanted to or not. Public voyeurism rather than musical appreciation was the marketing tool Bethune used to attract ticket buyers.

  Pandering to the racism of whites at that time, Bethune and others who exploited Thomas did so by propagating several enduring myths about him. Geneva Handy Southall spent approximately twenty-five years researching and writing three books about his life in order to refute the racist myths and give him the scholarly treatment he deserves.67 Among the most popular but untrue stories circulated about Thomas were that he did not train, that he was only popular among curiosity seekers, and that his mother meekly allowed others to exploit him.

  Southall and other researchers have disproved these stories. While Thomas certainly possessed an extraordinary amount of inherent artistic talent, he received music lessons most of his life and even traveled with a piano coach. This was in addition to the countless hours of practice he engaged in on a daily basis. Like all great artists, he grew through hard work and was not an empty vessel through which music poured from some mysterious source
. Also, despite the carnival-like hype around him, Thomas’s skills impressed the professional classical community of the era. His concerts were attended by some of the most serious and best-known classical musicians in the late nineteenth century.

  Thomas’s parents were often maligned by the media of the time. Southall counters the myths by arguing that Charity regretted having Thomas taken away from her and demonstrates that she had little choice in the matter, even after slavery officially ended.68

  And despite Bethune’s well-constructed tale of benevolence and mercy toward the black people he enslaved, he was a staunch advocate for the perpetuation of black enslavement. In Georgia, the autocratic and aristocratic Bethune was best known as having started The Corner Store, the first newspaper in the state to openly and defiantly call for secession.69 The Bethune family profited from slavery, and the general saw little reason to bring it to an end. His exploitation of Thomas was no different from the labor he appropriated from Domingo, Charity, and the other black men and women he enslaved and forced to work without compensation.

  The year 1857, when Thomas began his path to becoming a national and international musical legend, was also the year that the nation’s battle over slavery reached a new crescendo. On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in the case of Dred Scott. Born into slavery in 1799, Scott was eventually bought and enslaved by John Emerson, an army doctor stationed at different times during his career in slave states (Missouri, Louisiana) and free states (Illinois and Wisconsin). In 1846, in Missouri, three years after Emerson died, Scott and his wife, Harriet, filed suit against the widow Irene Sanford for their manumission after she refused their offer to buy their freedom. While the Scotts won in one state court, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the decision. The Scotts’ appeal was accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in the infamous seven-to-two decision establishing that black people—whether or not they were slaves—were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.