Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia University; A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell) will present, “Freedom and Unfreedom:  The Construction of Washington City in the District of Columbia,” on Thursday, March 7, at 5:15pm, in Milstein Auditorium, Milstein Hall.
A reception will follow in Milstein Hall Dome. Open to all.

This event is part of an A.D. White Professors-at-Large (ADW-PAL) visit and is cosponsored by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).

Abstract: In March of 1792, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson hand wrote an advertisement that he sent to President George Washington and the three Commissioners charged with overseeing the construction of “Washington City in Territory of Columbia.” That announcement advertised a competition for designs of “The President’s House” (White House) and a “Capitol” (U.S. Capitol). All five of these men from Virginia and Maryland, were politicians, planters, and enslavers. Mabel O. Wilson’s lecture will examine how enslaved and free Blacks became essential for the construction of the new federal city, from clearing land to making bricks. This dependency continued after the government arrived in 1800, as a Black work force maintained the city and serviced its white population. Her talk will consider how Washington City’s captive Black population, one that lived intimately with white residents, became a source of financial investment and moral peril. She explores how Black residents–free and enslaved–exploited opportunities of urban life such as greater mobility and “living out” to abscond or to self-purchase. Lastly, how was freedom, spatial practices of liberation guaranteed politically, economically, and juridically, dependent on the unfreedom of Blacks in Washington City?