WASHINGTON — 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. Lawmakers said the memorials will ensure that slaves’ contributions are never forgotten.
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.”
Historians have discovered that slaves worked 12-hour days, six days a week on the Capitol. The federal government rented each slave from the owners for $5 per month.
Lawmakers recounted the story of one of those slaves, Philip Reid. He was owned by a Maryland sculptor who had been contracted to bronze a plaster copy of the Statue of Freedom, the statue on top of the Capitol Dome.
When the worker who had assembled the plaster model refused to disassemble it until he was paid more, Reid figured out how to do it.
Reid is believed to be the person put in charge of bronzing the Statue of Freedom and was thanked for his work in an address to Congress in 1928 by one of the statue’s admirers.
