WASHINGTON (AP) - African-American slaves sweated in the summer heat and shivered in the winter's cold while helping to build the U.S. Capitol.
Congress took note of their service and sacrifice Wednesday by erecting commemorative plaques inside the Capitol in their honor. Lawmakers said the memorials will ensure that the contributions of slaves in building one of the world's most recognizable buildings are never again forgotten.
"In remembering the slaves who labored here, we give them in death some measure of the dignity they were so cruelly denied in life," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said at the plaques' unveiling.
The plaques read: "This original exterior wall was constructed between 1793 and 1800 of sandstone quarried by laborers, including enslaved African Americans who were an important part of the workforce that built the United States Capitol."
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15 comments:
It's a little too late recognize the slaves that HELP build the capital. The chinese labor force was a little bit bigger than the blacks.Anyway they are all dead , and the capital is in need of major repairs. The damn building looks as if it is falling apart.
guess its time to honor the slaves they built all those roman things still standing too
Lets see how many white americans are going to do those major repairs for free.
Hold your breath-Sharpton will probably demand monetary reparations at union scale for that work.
All kidding aside,it is decent of someone to acknowledge the historic contributions of slave labours...
1:03 The slaves didn't do it for free they had no say in it . Had they not been sold into slavery by their own people we wouldn't be having this conversation .
How many founding fathers had slaves.
2:03 Every race has been enslaved get over it your no more special then anyone else . If your looking for blame, blame the Africans who still practice slavery today !
I am a slave to Wicomico county
were all slaves in Maryland !
You people are sick. Slavery is and will always be a shameful part of the United Staes of America history. No other ethnic group endear the horrors of slavery. To be ripped from your homeland. Your history gone. Your identity gone. Force to speak another language. Force to practice another religion. Force to watch your children ripped from their mothers. Force to be beaten and rape. This list can go on and on and on. For the person above, Africans were lied to and fooled about the plight of African forced into slavery. Shameful is what white america should feel. Shameful. And, to top it off, this country still practice this horror through their cheap labor with the illegal immigrants. Shameful. Majority of black america is still suffering behind the hatred that's engraved in each and every one of us.
7:22 is exactly right. All you have to do is reverse the situation. If I and my family were made slaves based on race or any other criteria, I would consider that a declaration of total war.
Many of the founding fathers owned slaves. Those like Washington and Jefferson made it even more indefensible because they wrote that they knew slavery was wrong and made their cries of liberty completely hollow. Of course they couldn't force their will on the immediately on the entire new nation, but they didn't have the moral integrity to free their own slaves. Their own economic concerns overruled what they knew to be right! Yes, Washington did provide that his slave should be freed after he and his wife died and they could no longer profit from them. Wow! how noble; what a sacrifice!
Again, to any of you who say it wasn't all that bad: If blacks, Muslims, Asians or any other group act to enslave you and your family, would you not consider that a crime and declaration of total war?
ANYONE makes me, and my wife and kids slaves, I'm goin Nat Turner on their ass, period...Now he was a true American freedom fighter.
722....The Africans weren't the only people enslaved. It is a shameful, despicable part of American history. But at some point and time, like every other cultural group that's in America, you gotta pull yourself up by your boot straps. Nobody will do it for you. Don't use what happened in the past to hold you from your own future. And don't just blame white America, this white American right here, my family came over in the early 1900's. Some brokeass Irishmen living in Brooklyn. Our family has ascended the American social structure through hard work, and that can be true for anyone in America today.
7:22 You were never a slave stop crying victim hood ! Every group in human history has suffered greatly and American slavery was no worse or better but it was ended by white people as well don't leave out that important fact !
The period from the beginning of the TransAtlantic African Slave so-called Trade (1500) to the demarcation of Africa into colonies in the late 1800s is one of the most documented periods in World History. Yet, with the exception of the renegade African slave raider Tippu Tip of the Congo (Muslim name, Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juna al-Marjebi) who was collaborating with the White Arabs (also called Red Arabs) there is little documentation of independent African slave raiding. By independent is meant that there were no credible threats, intoxicants or use of force by Whites to force or deceive the African into slave raiding or slave trading and that the raider himself was not enslaved to Whites at the time of slave raiding or "trading". Trade implies human-to-human mutuality without force. This was certainly not the general scenario for the TransAtlantic so-called Trade in African slaves. Indeed, it was the Portuguese who initiated the European phase of slave raiding in Africa by attacking a sleeping village in 1444 and carting away the survivors to work for free in Europe.
7:22 you really need to look at history more. many ethnic races endured as much if not more then the africans.
ever hear of egypt and the jews? and some guy called moses?
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