From the moment African-Americans could set pen to paper, there was the black-owned newspaper. The role of the black press reached its heights in the postbellum era, as millions of the formerly enslaved black Americans hungered for a voice amidst the clamor and fuss of Reconstruction. This voice gre[...]
Archive for the ‘Washington D.C.’ Category
La Jeune fille à marier
He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand toward the case. “Oh, do give me one–I haven’t smoked for days!” “Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.” “Yes–but it is not considered becoming in a jeune fil[...]
January 23rd, 2009 - 12:05 am § in African American, America, Heads of State, Men, Scandal, Washington D.C.
The Man Who Came to Dinner
“Booker T. Washington, the well known negro educator and President of the Tuskegee, Ala. institute , was a guest of President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt at dinner at the white house tonight.” It was a day like any other when the White House Social Calendar, a regular column in the news[...]
January 20th, 2009 - 12:05 am § in Amusements, Ceremonies, Heads of State, Politics, Washington D.C.
The Presidential Inauguration
There is no other expression of American democracy than the exit of one President for another. Whether the President has served one term or two–or in the case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, four–the inauguration ceremony is one of excitement, triumph and the bittersweet. The first inaugur[...]
Inside the White House
January 1 marked the 208th anniversary of the formal opening of the White House, at Washington, as the official home of the President of the United States. Having taken possession of the newly-built “President’s House” in November of 1800, President John Adams threw an official [...]
Princess Alice: The Irrepressible Miss Roosevelt
Second only to her father, Theodore Roosevelt, of this time period, no one represented Washington D.C. and the White House more than Alice. It was her antics that caused the exasperated TR to opine “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both,” an[...]
The Care and Feeding of the First Family
As “First Family,” the President, his wife and children, and any other dependents, had their needs and cares were catered to by a bevy of secretaries, secret service agents, and most important of all, domestic servants! According to Helen Taft, “the management of the White House is[...]
Social Washington: the “Colored” Aristocracy
From the end of Reconstruction until the Great War, Washington was the center of the black aristocracy. Nowhere else in the United States possessed such a concentration of “old families,” not merely from the District and nearby Maryland and Virginia, but from throughout the country, whos[...]
