The Slave House to the White House: From Hercules to Obama and the meaning of the black presence in the Executive Mansion

When the nation's first president, George Washington, occupied the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia (at that time, Washington, D.C. had not yet become the nation's capitol), he did a very odd thing for the leader of a newly freed democracy that proclaimed that all men were created equal: he imported slaves from his Virginia plantation to serve him in what would become known as the White House. In the White House, across the street from the United States Congress, on 6th and Market Streets in Philly, President Washington set up slave quarters in the residence that was meant to be a beacon of freedom for all the nations to see.

When talk about slave quarters in the White House first began a few years back, the National Park Service argued that slaves never lived in the mansion. They did not want to mar the image of the executive residence by suggesting that something as ugly as slavery lived there, so they denied it. But on last year, as excavation began on for a new memorial to be built on the site where the house previously sat over 200 years ago, a funny thing was exposed below the ground: slave quarters. A slave house in the White House, just think about that for a moment.

The irony obviously did not escape his enslaved servants, either. Hercules (believed to be the man in the above portrait on the left), one of the slaves that was brought from Virginia, served as the Executive Chef in the White House kitchen. By all accounts, he lived an enviable life, even for a slave. He was allowed to sell leftovers from the kitchen to local residents and made an estimated profit of $200 a year. However, no matter how comfortable his life was or high he rose, he was still a slave.

It is very likely that Hercules came into contact on a regular basis with the free black population of Philadelphia, including AME Church founder, Bishop Richard Allen. In addition to being a pastor, Allen was also a master chimney sweep and one of his contracts was with President Washington. It is difficult to believe that Hercules and Allen (himself a former slave) would not have had contact while in Philadelphia. Seeing free black men and women come and go as they pleased must have taken a toll on Hercules. When he could no longer take being a slave, he packed what he could carry, slipped out into the night, and disappeared never to be seen of again by the president. Hercules ran as fast as he could away from the White House.

Yes, in the 1790s, blacks were running away from the White House. But now, 200 plus years later, blacks are now running to the White House! When President Elect Obama and his family walk through the doors of the White House, they will represent more than just the First Family. They will represent more than just a change from one political party to the next. They will represent, as Maya Angelou most eloquently expressed it, "the dream and the hope of the slave." They represent the dream of Hercules, the dream of Olney Judge (another escaped White House slave), the dream of the millions of slaves and those who died in the Middle Passage before even making it to the Americas. They are a powerful reminder that sometimes, dreams do come true.

Speaking of dreams, isn't it interesting that 40 years after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Moses of the Civil Rights Movement, we have come to the place where God has raised a Joshua to take the movement in a new direction. Could this be what Dr. King saw from the mountaintop that night before his death in his last speech? If that sounds like a stretch, consider this fact: we stand exactly 40 years after Robert F. Kennedy proclaimed on "Meet the Press" that he believed a black man could be president in 40 years. Imagine it, 40 years is the same period of time that the Hebrews had to wander in the wilderness before God allowed them to enter into the Promised Land, and now black Americans have lived long enough to witness that which was hardly a dream just one generation ago.

But that is glory of what only God can do. God can move you from the "slave house" in life and place you in the "White House" even though all the odds are against you. Someone said it this way, "He picked me up, turned me around, and placed my feet on solid ground." For what we have witnessed on this past week, to God be the glory!