Michelle Obama: I Wake Up Every Day In a House Built by Slaves

[rasbridge]

Michelle Obama: I Wake Up Every Day In a House Built by Slaves

By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz June 5, 2016 , 4:29 am

 

In a commencement address on Friday at City College in New York City, First Lady Michelle Obama raised more than a few eyebrows when she referred to the White House as “a house that was built by slaves”.

 

Though she did not mention Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, by name, she made several comments that were apparently aimed directly at the candidate who has made a name for himself by taking a hard-line against illegal immigration.

 

“Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears,” the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) said. “We don’t build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home.”

 

“It’s the story that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, black young women — head off to school, waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to America for the same reasons as many of you: to get an education and improve his prospects in life,” Michelle Obama said.

 

Her point is historically accurate. When construction on the nation’s capital began in 1792, attempts to recruit trained artisans from Europe were unsuccessful. Washington D.C. lies between Virginia and Maryland, two states in which it was legal to own slaves so the work force included local white laborers, Scottish masons, and free and enslaved blacks. The government did not own the slaves but paid their wages to their owners.

 

Being the first bi-racial president in American history, the issue of slavery and slave ownership has been part of the narrative surrounding the Obama presidency. In a speech during his first primary, Obama  stated he was “married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners.” Michelle Obama discovered in 2008 that one of her great-great grandfathers was a slave who worked on a rice plantation in South Carolina. An article in the Baltimore Sun cited an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time. He claims that on Obama’s mother’s side of the family, his great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

Source: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/69125/michelle-obama-wake-house-built-slaves/#Fd7uT1Cd0akDg2G7.97

[steven36]

It really wasn't built by slaves they just made the stone to build it.
 

Quote

 

. Enslaved people quarried and cut the rough stone that was later dressed and laid by Scottish masons to erect the walls of the President's House. The slaves joined a work force that included local white laborers and artisans from Maryland and Virginia, as well as immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and other European nations.

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/questions/did-slaves-build-the-white-house

 

 

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The slaves who worked on the original White House — it was burned by the British in the War of 1812 — were lucky in one respect: Skilled craftsmen taught many of them how to build cabinets and do elite carpentry.

 

They were even paid

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Smith writes that some of those skilled slaves earned extra money for their work, and eventually, were able to use the extra income to buy their freedom.

 

[pc71520]

21 hours ago, rasbridge said:

Michelle Obama: I Wake Up Every Day In a House Built by Slaves

She comes from slaves...

[Ballistic Gelatin]

So what, Michelle?

 

I wake up every morning to a government run by idiots like your husband and you.

[pc71520]

34 minutes ago, Ballistic Gelatin said:

So what, Michelle?

I wake up every morning to a government

run by idiots like your husband and you.

ΟbamaCare...