activism? .. >> from tennessee, from illinois, from new york, from wherever. okay? so gotta -- okay. so the point is that we were inspired by a group of people to step up. it just happened that i ended up doing it in electoral politics, and my sense of it is so we came, those of us who came here in the late '60s and '70s,

we came here because we saw ourselves as an extension of movement. we saw ourselves as taking there the streets to the halls of congress and to put that per spctive out there -- perspective out there, all right? so that's how we saw ourselves, and that's how i tried to continue to operate. but along the way i also realized very early on that i had a job to govern, that i had to try to figure out what, ultimately, is in the best interests of the american people. can i just say one other little, quick thing on the side? this is just my political perspective. if you look at what's going on now, i think that too many people never sat on the steps and never had that conversation with themselves that their, that they're still carrying the sign, and they never decided to take the responsibility to walk inside the building and assume the burden and the risk and the responsibility to try to govern, to work with sister wilson and lee and others to try to change the nature of the country. they're still protesting.

and the country's been doing this as a result of that. and you have a question? yes, sir. >> mr. chairman, you mentioned in your speech about how, you know, honored you were to serve as a member of congress and, indeed, it is an honorable profession. like congresswoman gabrielle giffords, you had the strength of a staff person, and so you've known that personally and up front i just wanted to see what you would propose to keep members of congress from being portrayed as a cartoon and caricature and if you could just a few brief words about your colleague and brother, thicke key lee. -- mickey leland. >> mickey leland was a good friend of mine from texas, he took barbara jordan's place. no one takes barbara jordan's

place, he sat in the seat. so a big part of my roots was from texas, so when mickey and i met up, there was a big affinity we had, and his family sort of adopted me, so mickey and i became like blood brothers very fast. mickey had been going in and out of africa delivering food. mickey was an incredible guy, and be i loved mickey leland because he had no sacred cows. he would step on any sacred cow, you know, anywhere. i remember, for example, we went in the house dining room one day, and there were a number of my more conservative colleagues sitting at one of the tables in the dining room, and mickey said, ron, come with me. we walked up to the table, and he said how are all you brothers in the sheep caucus this morning? how would you like to have a couple of colored fellas sit down and have breakfast with you? [laughter] i mean, but mickey had a way of cutting through, you know what i'm saying? everybody, they laughed and they cried. but we sat down, and we had breakfast. but mickey had this wonderful way, i loved mickey leland.

anyway, mickey's gone his way to ethiopia, and i said, mickey, i don't want you ever to go to africa alone. next time you go, i'm going with you. ron, i'm leaving on monday, i'm going to ethiopia to deliver some food to children in ethiopia. i said, i've got to go to a funeral on monday, let's go on tuesday, just wait for me, mickey, i'll fly all night, i'll come back, i'll meet you, i'll pack. i won't even go home. you know, i'll meet you out there. he said, no, man, i gotta go. young woman on my staff on the district of columbia committee staff, she came up to me and said, mr. dellums, i know you'd want to go with mickey. i'm getting ready to celebrate a birthday, and i was going to go to the caribbean, but i can't think of a better place to go than to go to ethiopia and go help congressman leland and help

the children of ethiopia. can i go and take your place? and she went and took my place, and they both died in this a plane crash in ethiopia. and i lost, um, a friend beyond my ability to describe. mickey was an incredible, wonderful, wonderful, spontaneous, just extraordinary human being. and i loved him. the first part of your question was -- >> [inaudible] yeah. no, no, i got you. um, you know, i opine for a moment, but one of the things that bothers me as i step back and i look, and i think that there's no one fault, but i

think we as a society have, a, become so jaded, so cynical that everything is viewed through a cynical lens. so it's very difficult for people to see other people as being genuine. you know, we attribute motives. i always say the one beautiful thing that i learned in the congress was one of the rules that says on the floor of congress you cannot challenge the assumptions of another person. you know? or your words get taken down. that's a beautiful thing. because if you take that outside so that you're not involved in challenging motives, if you challenge your members' motives, your words can be taken down. so take that off the floor of congress. if you don't challenge people's motives, then you're forced to deal with the credibility, the integrity of the substance or

the lack thereof of a person's argument. you don't go to their motives, you go to the substance of their argument. well, we have become so cynical that we are always challenging each other's motives. and in very few instances do we engage in an intelligent discussion of the substance of one's argument. well, you're running for office. you're trying to be political. or -- you see what i'm saying? and so rather than engage at the level of ideas, and one thing about democracy is at some point you've got to engage at the level of serious conversation. you've got to be able to talk with each other. and we have become so cynical that we don't talk, we don't communicate. we, we're very, very cynical. b, when i can just write an e-mail and i don't have to look you in the eye -- see, like right now the way you're looking at me, i'm compelled to deal with you. i'm compelled to respect your humanity, your attentiveness, my

ability to kind candidate with you. but if i'm in a room all by myself, i could say whatever i want to say because i am not tempered by my ability to see you as a total human being. and i think that that has something to do with it. thirdly, we've become very impatient. you know, i remember when i first got elected mayor. this guy walked up to me and he said, hey, man, what you done for me lately? man, i haven't even been in office eight weeks. [laughter] give me a break, man. you know, the last guy was here eight years. did you confront him that way? [laughter] he went, uh, you know what i mean? so we're very much in a hurry. wait a minute, you've been president for six months and you haven't changed the world? congressional black caucus, you mean, there's 40 some of you and you haven't changed the world? not understanding how all this comes together. so we've been, we're impatient,

we've become very cynical, we've become extremely disrespectful of each other. and, and finally, as i said, i think many of us have become, we have simply changed the venue of our activism. you know, and like a speech that resonated at home, i've always maintained that once you come here and you you're exposed to all this information, sometimes the speech that got great applause back home is not a speech that gets applause here because there are people who listen differently, who have, who understand differently. you know? because i used to love to wait for some of my colleagues to get up and give that home-spun speech, you know, and i was chair of armed services. i mean, there was one guy who got up, man, he got up to give this incredible -- and i'm thinking to myself, now, i know he got thunderous applause when he gave that speech at home, but there were a zillion holes in the speech. so i said would the gentleman

yield. and apparently, somebody had told him, look, under no circumstances do you yield to this brother -- [laughter] because he gonna stay up all night doing his homework, because if you're not ready -- and he looked at his colleagues, and his colleagues looked at him, and it was like, we can't help you, man. [laughter] and i said, would the gentleman yield? he kind of froze. and at a certain point he just walked off, walked off the floor of congress. [laughter] so, you know, sometimes -- last point. i believe very strongly that the greatest respect that you can pay to your adversary is to give them your undivided attention. and we're not listening to each other. and i think it's out of that respect and willingness to

listen to each other, to hear each other. and sometimes my colleagues will say, ron, you got the patience -- you listen to all that crazy stuff? you have to listen. because if you want them to hear you, you've got to be able to hear them. and we're shot hearing each other anymore, we're not listening to each other anymore. so you add all of that up, and then we become late night talk show jokes. and so we become caricatures, and we become jokes. but i maintain that those who are in elective office whenever the opportunity presents itself to, to allow people to understand your sense of dignity and pride that you have not only in what you do and the responsibility that you have and for democracy. you have to keep doing that. cannot allow the media and the internet and others to intimidate you from standing up for, ultimately, who you are. at the end of the day, there are two factors over which you have

control, and i'll end on this; your faithfulness to what you believe in and your willingness to show up to the fight. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, congressman. for your comments and your stories. it was wonderful. we also want to recognize another esteemed member of congress who's come in, congresswoman from the great state of texas. is there any comments you'd like to make? [applause] >> let me thank my colleague, the honorable frederica wilson, for having the genius to make sure that we did not leave this week without having commemoration to our members of congress. it is particularly special for

me because ron dellums, i believe, at least knew and shared in the lives of the honorable barbara jordan at least as she lived out her tenure and her after-tenure in the united states congress. and to my brother, the honorable mickey leland. when i'm in schools, i always say he died on the side of an ethiopian mountain refusing to give up on those who could not help themselves. and then, um, a predecessor and brother, the honorable craig washington. this is an appropriate honoring of our dear and special members of congress. ron dellums captured a concept of listening, and, oh, how much i wish we could bottle that now in this time, in this century. i would listen to the stories of mickey, i was blessed by the support of the honorable barbara

jordan. but mickey told most of the humorous stories but also the friendship stories that generated an opportunity for leadership as the congressional black caucus was so unique. small in size, but willing, if you will, to traverse roles that had not been traversed. let me just leave you with two or three action items of the congressional black caucus that often are not noted. we are noted for legislation and seen here on the hill, but i think it is important in quiet times to recognize that there had to be some toughness going on. members of the congressional black caucus organized and marched to the libyan embassy and were the first voices to ask for the change in government, albeit there had been longstanding interaction with our african brothers and sisters in libya. we saw that the crisis called

out for our response. and it was that first statement that emboldened the ambassador, that was heard around the world that libyan-americans and other libyans were willing to say someone cared. it was african-americans, congressional black caucus members, who from the very moment of upheaval in haiti held on to the hand of the haitian people. and i'm reminded of a meeting in the white house, in the administration prior to president obama's administration. when we were in this -- in a room tussling about the calamity if -- in haiti, the upheaval in the government. and we wanted to speak to then-president bush. and a number of emissaries came in the room to, if you will, congressman dell result, to --

dellums, to humor us, to comfort us, to suggest that they were the ones that would make the ultimate decision. and n essence, we were polite, we listened. we smiled. and we indicated that we wanted to see the president of the united states of america. we did not move. and it was finally recognized that we had to meet with the president of the united states on this vital issue. stories that are not written up, stories that are not, if you will, crafted in history. finally, some years ago students of purview a&m, historically black college, denied their very birthright, the right to vote. a decision that ultimately went to the united states supreme court. and as a member of congress along with others, we marched, um, down one of those country roads for 15 to 20 miles with

7,000 people. the country town that purview a&m was in had never seen the likes of to insure that students could vote where they went to school. lastly, i would say in the great state of florida under another governor when someone raised their head about denying affirmative action and be the call came out from then-congresswoman brown and congressman meeks and others, hastings that we thesed a few of you down -- needed a few of you down here, and that great state recognized that with the coming together of the congressional black caucus, just the presence of being able to say that we were in the house, 25,000 people marched to the state capitol. and as i recall, congresswoman, we won. so these are stories that are not chronicled. we know the historic life of congress month dellums and john

lewis, but in the annals of our mind, unwritten books, are stories where the congressional black caucus, excuse me, members far and wide are to be touted. and i'll just close on this one because our dear sister is no longer with us, two dear sisters that are no longer with us, juanita melinda mcdonald who became the first african-american woman to chair the house administration committee and to put in congress the first african-american picture of a congressperson which you'll find as we enter into the united states chambers there of the house of representatives. the honorable stephanie tubbs jones who after the 2004 election rose to the floor of the house and be said i, too, am an american. this election was unfair as members also rose in 2000 and came and did something that had

not been done for' ons where you accept the tallying of the electoral college. in 2000 members of the congressional black caucus arrived in washington, went on the floor and respectfully objected one after another. so you can see that it is a place where much may not be written, but we are grateful for the work they have done. i also encourage you in my last lawyer's closing to go visit sojourner truth who we hope to move in her rightful place. but she, in fact, is the first and only statue of an african-american woman in the united states congress, legislation that i introduced, and we placed her in the united states capital just a few years ago with the support of all of the members of the congressional black caucus and, certainly, at that time senator hillary clinton. we can do things together, we can collaborate, but we should never leave who we are outside

the door for our history is too precious to ever leave behind. thank you, congressman and congresswoman. [applause] >> and on that note, i'd like to give another round of applause for our sponsor, congresswoman wilson. [applause] and thank you all for this wonderful program and have a wonderful black history month. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. now on booktv, elizabeth

dowling taylor recounts the life of paul jennings, born into slavery in 1799 and a servant to president james madison. the author reports as mr. jennings' life as a slave in the white house and his relationship with james and dolly madison. this is just under an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> well, good afternoon. welcome to the library of congress. i'm john cole, i'm the director of the center for the book in the reading promotion arm of the library of congress. we were created in 1977 by librarian of congress daniel borsten to help the library of congress stimulate public interest in books and reading and literacy. we operate primarily through a couple of national networks. there are state centers for the book in most of the states, and they work with us to promote books and reading in their

respective states, and in particular to promote writers and writing. we also have national reading promotion partners, many nonprofit groups and government organizations, that we also work with to promote books and reading. we are a major component in the national book festival, and i hope many of you know about the national book festival and have attended in the past. i can tell you that this year's festival will be on the national mall from september 22nd to 23rd. we're delighted to be able to have expanded the national book festival in the last year, and that's going to continue. there are some more seats up front, please, if you'd like to come up. there's plenty of room. today we are featuring another kind of way that we promote books and reading. we love to give book talks at the library of congress to make

a couple of points that a lot of the research at the library of congress and many other libraries result in a book in the printed word. we are pleased to feature authors and their books that have a special relationship with the library of congress. in in this case as you will learn much of the work for beth taylor's book was not here at the library. we also help sponsor project books, books that come out of long-term library of congress efforts. so we're very pleased to have you here. there is a really a listing of future talks. every one of our talks is supported, almost all of our talks are also supported by one of the custodial divisions of the library of congress. in this case we're grateful to the manuscript division for being our co-sponsor.

today's -- [inaudible] by c-span and by the library of congress. more than 200 of our talks are available on the library of congress' web site, so in a sense you can get a snapshot of our current literature and writing in the united states not only through the books and beyond talks on our web site, but also through national book festival programming. and since the book festival was created in 2001, we have accumulated more than 700 30-minute or 45-minute talks from different writers. so i hope you take advantage of that. it's really a snapshot of the importance of american writing that's growing each year, and now we're, lo and behold, we're going to go into our second decade of national book festival and books of the beyond talks. because today's talk is being filmed, i urge you to turn off

all things electronic. we will have a, once our speaker is introduced, you will hear from her, and there are more seats up front, please, if you want to come on up. and then there will be a session, about a 20-minute session of questions and answers, and then there will be a book signing. so books are for sale at the special library of congress discount at the back of the room, and you also can pick up a schedule for future talks in the -- ahead. in the question and answer period, we will be filming not that part of it for c-span as well, and i'm going to ask people to come up to the microphone, but i also want to tell you that by asking a question and participating, you're also giving the library of congress permission and c-span permission to use your image and your wonderful questions as part of our

programming while you wait for the wonderful answers from our speaker. to introduce beth, i'm really please today introduce julie miller who since june 2009 has been served as the specialist in american, early american history in the manuscript division. and i also want to add that shortly after julie joined our staff, she spoke in our books and beyond series about her new book, "abandoned: foundlings in 19th century new york city." so you can see you have authors and readers coming at you from all angles when you come to a books and beyond talk. i'd like, now, to turn this over to julie miller, let's give her a hand. julie? [applause] >> thank you. i paid him to say that. [laughter] um, our speaker today, oops, beth taylor, has a doctorate from the university of california at berkeley. she's been the director of

interpretation at monticello, thomas jefferson's house, the director of education at montpelier, james madison's house, and a fellow at the virginia foundation for the humanities. and now the author of this book, "a slave in the white house: paul generallings and the madisons," and be i might add that she's also appeared on the daily show which some of you may be interested in seeing. [laughter] i met beth when she came to do research in the manuscript division here at the library, and in the reading room beth said something very important. she realized that the library's collections of papers of leading colonial national figures contained papers and information about people who are not those people, but other people, the people who surrounded them. and very often those people were slaves. that information takes the form of mentioned in letters, journals and foreign records, but sometimes it consists of letters written by the slaves themselves, and this is the case of paul jennings. the paul jennings letters that beth found in the dolly madison

papers. um, often documents -- it's interesting to realize that documents like these survived very often really just because they were swept up into the papers of prominent people, people who were recognized for being prominent. and in some cases we can assume that these records are the only written records of these lives. so they're really very valuable things that we more or less incidentally have this the manuscript division. beth's accomplishment in this book is that she was able to excavate the story of one of these lives, the story of paul jennings. and now i'm very proud to introduce beth taylor. [applause] >> well, i thank john and julie for having me today. i thank, um, all of you or for turning out. "a slave in the white house: paul jennings and the madisons," was a great labor of love. i spent three years researching the book and a year writing it.

i have a fondness for good narrative nonfiction, and a lot of times if i read journalistic pieces, i enjoy when they begin with an extended anecdotal lead. so i adapted that approach in my book, and each chapter starts with what we might call a vignette. i really labored over the details. if i give the weather, it's documented. if i say james madison's overcoat was olive, i have an eyewitness and so on. so i thought what i might do today is intersperse my comments with reading excerpts from some of these vignettes. they all place jennings at or near a doorway or some kind of opening. in one case it's the hatch of a ship, and in this first one it's an open gravement -- grave. on or about 28, february, 1801,

montpelier, the madison plantation in orange county, virginia. the old master died in the dullness of february. on their way to the burial in the family graveyard, the house servants passed by the slave graveyard where most of them expected to be buried someday. it was cold, and they walked on passing between the tobacco fields to the east and the original homestead to the west. the madison family graveyard was located this the backyard of this first homesite, the main dwelling long burned to the ground and supplanted by the georgian mansion whence they had started their third mile, informal procession. once the household was circled around the open grave, the house servants raised expectant eyes to the new master of montpelier, james madison jr., standing next to his mother, nellie. there was this day at montpelier another mother and son present.

the mother's name is unknown. the name of the toddler at her skirts was paul jennings. she, perhaps, held the little boy's hand hoping not to transmit her anxiety over what might happen next. for the death of a master was always a time of tension for his enslaved people. they would have little control over decisions about their futures including the fates of their nearest family members. well, james madison jr. became the fourth president of the united states. paul jennings' journey from slavery to freedom would play out in the highest circles of ideas and power. the white house, james madison's study. and in freedom he would author, as decreed by the white house historical association, the first white house memoir, and its full text is included as an

appendix in "a slave this the white house." it was my familiarity with this memoir that first drew me to jennings' story. it is titled "a colored man's reminiscences of james madison," and as that title implies, it is more about the so-called great man than it is about the author himself. but my interest was in jennings. so i set out to discover elements of his biography, uncover the circumstances behind the publication of the memoir in 1865 and track down and interview living, direct descendants. paul was only 10 when he came to washington in 1809, the first year of the madison administration. he was chosen from among 100 month peelier slaveses -- montpelier slaves as just, oh,

two or three to be part of the white house domestic staff. and he found washington to be dreary as, indeed, it wasment -- was. not only because he was likely home sick, but because this was a clanked city and at that time existed very much more on paper than it did on the ground. but i think that soon enough paul realized that he was at the start of a great adventure. he would be a footman in the president's house for eight years. he would come of age in washington, age 10 to age 18, and in the process he would be an important witness to history in the making. 31, may, 1809, the first of

dolly madison's white house drawing rooms. it was a rainy wednesday. paul jennings in his footman's livery likely had the initial duty of meeting guests at the north entrance with an umbrella. there was no portico then for protection from the elements. tonight was the first of what would become dolly madison's legendary drawing rooms with the presidential mansion open for everyone who was properly introduced. more gentlemen than ladies attended this premier night as would be expect inside a town with many government men in residence without their families. had more ladies been present, dolly would still have stood apart. not because she was seated on a platform as martha washington had been at her courtly receptions, but because of the charming intertwining of her personality and dress. jennings himself later described some of her ensembles, fabrics of purple velvet and white satin, always with turbans of

the finest materials and trim to match. president madison, happy to leave the limelight to his wife, was attired as usual in the old style. paul had no way of knowing that he would one day serve as madison's valet and be responsible for his clothes and his queue. as the guests mingled among the rooms, servants threaded through them with trays of refreshments; wine, punch, coffee, ice cream, etc. were liberally served, jennings recalled. young jennings may have been among the servers that first night, but more likely was a runner, acting on the steward's commands to replenish this from the pantry or tote that up from the cellars. it was both a frightening and exhilarating experience. the carriage, music, mirrors and chandeliers, the sophisticated and political conversation. paul, the observer, paul the listener received an eyeful and an earful this evening. as i began my research, i

prepared a word document headed "what was paul jennings like," and i added to it as i went along. and two characteristics among others became clear. he was a good listener, and he was a good networker. two traits that serve anyone well who's interested in getting ahead. i interpret jennings' life as a deliberate, courageous and successful pursuit of the right to rise which really is the most american of promises, isn't it? jennings after his eight years in washington thought about running away. instead of returning to the plantation with the madisons.

the evidence for this is a letter in the madison papers written by jefferson's nephew warning him that there was such a rumor. and i visualized jennings, his last window of opportunity to act. and thinking not only about whether he had the nerve to chance an illegal run and perhaps be caught and punished, but realizing also that that virginia plantation was his home too. could he leave the scene of his boyhood, the home of his mother never to return? it's not as if he could have said, well, if i don't make it back this christmas, i'll be sure to do that next christmas. this would be forever. and what we know is that in the event jennings, indeed, returned to virginia, and he was promoted, if you will, to the position of james madison's

personal attendant or body servant. and as such, as a constant servant in madison's study, he was present as madison received a queue of notables in that room from thomas jefferson to andrew jackson, henry clay, daniel webster and very many young men of learning. madison's niece wrote that jennings sighed for freedom, was enamored with freedom. well, you bet. those young men of learning, they would answertize about spending one evening listening to the father of the constitution hold forth. jennings, like part of the wallpaper, was present for hundreds of such discourses. and in the book i develop the thesis that jennings was able to

absorb the theoretical underpinnings that would support his innate yearning for freedom and allow him l to identify it as a natural right of man. late february, 1837. jennings prepares the madison city house in washington for future use by the widow, dolly madison. paul jennings had returned to lafayette square for the first time in 20 years. james madison died the previous summer, and mistress dolly decided she would make use of her city house in washington and sent jennings ahead to ready the dwelling. it was still february, but in anticipation of a new administration already the town noise was gathering along with that of spring's first frogs. the atmosphere must have reminded jennings of james madison's inauguration 28 years

earlier. jennings took stock of a much-altered lafayette square. a block from the madison house the restored white house now sported porticos at both the north and south fronts. half the building's charred and weakened exterior walls had been rebuilt n. the course of which the workmen dug out the partially-preserved dinner display that jennings had prepared the day the british torched the mansion in august 1814. the george washington portrait had long ago been retrieved from the maryland farmhouse where it had safely rested after the fire and returned to the white house. as for jennings himself, his young manhood was behind him, and he was still a slave. nevertheless, now a husband and father he led a life of meaning and took advantage of opportunities as they came up. jennings' rise would always require unremitting resistance against legal, social and psychological impediments. the contrast with dolly's son is

striking. payne todd, hopelessly alcoholic and with neither occupation, nor spouse, seemed to lack purpose altogether. of course, one could say payne took advantage of his situation too. he certainly had taken advantage of his mother and stepfather time and again, slowly draining their finances and goodwill. well, as you know, every presidential family needs an embarrassing their do well -- [laughter] and in this case it was dolly's son from her first marriage, payne todd. and payne beautifully filled out role for me as foil to paul jennings. here he had every advantage in life and squandered every one. jennings had no advantage this life, and yet even while still a slave managed to carve out a life of meaning for himself. now, when james madison died,

jennings was disappointed to learn that he had not been freed as he had reason to expect. he was then given to understand that madison had made an agreement with his widow that she would free all the montpelier slaves, all the 100 slaves. well, that certainly wasn't going to happen. she and her son began selling slaves right away, although in her 1841 will she did have a term that would free jennings at her death, the only slave so treated. but he wasn't so sure about that as time went by. he got on her bad side. now, he's back in washington, but his wife and his children are owned by another master in virginia, a neighbor of madison's. so not only had he not lived with them up until now, visited

with them only on the slaves' one traditional day off each week, sunday, but now he was altogether geographically separated from them. dolly, at this time, was hiring him out to president james polk. so jennings had a second white house experience beginning in 1845. and at this point the president and his mistress had given him permission to go back to virginia for a visit with his, um, family. but he had stayed longer than dolly approved of, and she wrote to her son and said that he, paul, will lose the best place, and his mistress' convenient resources. well, i want to stop with that story for a second because i want to tell you about my research at the library of congress and how it was here that i got my first hints as to

paul's family. and i think it's an interesting episode because it illustrates undertaking historical research in this day and age and a likely path for it. often starts, as it did for this particular aspect, with google books. [laughter] and google books, you know, you never know what you're going to get because you put in different combinations of keywords, and you see what comes up. and at one point even though i thought, certainly, i had tried this many times before, i discovered that here in the manuscript division of the library of congress was a 29-page manuscript titled "paul jennings and his times." well, i was just so excited at this point, i was director of education at month peelier but

thought -- montpelier but thought, well, when saturday comes, i'll be going up to make sure they really do have this item and can share it with me on saturday. so i called up, and someone in the manuscript division, and i must say everyone who works here has always assisted me with great thoroughness and kindnd, and i really, really -- kindness, and i really, really appreciate that. and such was the case with this gentleman on the phone who said, well, he looked it up, he went away, he came back, he said do you have -- let me look a little bit more, do you have another minute to hang on the phone, and i said i will be happy to hang on the phone and have you read me all 29 pages -- [laughter] of this manuscript, so that's no problem. but anyway, so he said, yes, indeed, we have it. and i went up then on saturday, and the fella who was working that day in the manuscript

division, i showed him the printout from google books, and he was surprised to see that what had been digitized on google books was the actual handbook of manuscripts in the library of congress. he had pulled out his copy, and it was like the bible, you know, from beneath his desk. and he did display a certain, a certain aspect of claiming this as their special document. don't tell me now anybody can get their hands on this from google l books. but anyway, once he brought forth the manuscript, i was just beside myself because right in the first page i'd learned, like, five new facts about paul jennings' biography. this was where i first learned that he had a wife named fannie gordon. and, you see, i also learned for the first time about daniel murray. daniel murray was the first african-american assistant

librarian of congress. and he had been preparing a monumental but never-published biographical encyclopedia of the colored race, prominent african-americans up to his time. and he included paul jennings among them because he was familiar with his having authored, um, "a colored man's reminiscences of james madison." and in 1901 he had interviewed paul jennings' only surviving child at that point, franklin jennings. and he had put together some notes. so i got to see both on microfilm some of the notes that murray had put together as well as this opening page of this manuscript. paul generallings and his times. and what is interesting and part and parcel of research so often is that according to murray,

franklin had said that his mother was assistant to zachary taylor. well, i knew that wasn't possible because i was familiar with the taylor family -- no relation -- of orange county, virginia, and i knew that zachary taylor was born in that area but that his immediate family had quickly moved on to kentucky. so that timing just won't work out. wouldn't work out. but what it gave me was the hint that it was some mistress in the taylor family. and, indeed, it was. and later i was able to verify that, you know, six ways to sunday through the orange county courthouse records and through other records at the national around -- archives and so on.

but that was really one among many exciting days that i spent at the library of congress. um, now, the rest of the story then. so paul jennings needs his freedom now. you see, what actually happened about this time is that his wife died. so now his children back in orange are motherless. the youngest just 2 years old. this is when he went to senator daniel webster for help. now, remember that i said he was a good networker, and you know that it helped to have acquaintances in high places, even as a slave. and webster came to jennings' rescue, and he advanced his purchase price, and he wasn't a rich man. he struck a deal with jennings whereby jennings would work in his household and pay that purchase price back at the rate of $8 a month. so finally at the age of 48, paul jennings became a free man.

and here's one thing he got involved with that very first full year of freedom. night, saturday, 15, april, 1848, a landing near the 7th street wharf, washington city. the a moonless night, and that was an advantage for the activity at the wharf was highly illegal. paul jennings played a role in the operations that led to this action and is thought to have been the black man silently observing the scene in the shadows noticed by ship captain daniel dreighton. the witness told him he knew what was going on but the captain need no apprehension on his account. before the night was over, 77 enslaved men, women and children would board a schooner named pearl and under the hatch before the new day dawned, they would be on their way to freedom in the north.

among the individuals hidden in the hull was dolly madison's runaway slave, ellen stewart. jennings had likely escorted the 15-year-old girl to the dock a mile or so south of pennsylvania avenue and watched her board the 54-ton baycraft schooner. it may well have been ellen's desperate need for flight that precipitated jennings own involvement in this slave escape venture. one day, approximately five months earlier, dolly had called ellen to the parlor for an errand but really to, quote, show her to a georgian as the colored people called the slave drivers. after ellen was dismissed, dolly arranged with the trader to pick up the girl at the pump in the public square where she would send her at a prearranged time under the ruse of fetching water, but ellen got wind of the plan and escaped into the bustle of the city. now, as i say, it impresses me

that jennings would risk his hard-won status as a free man by helping others try to achieve that same condition. this was not to be. jennings was one of the last operatives o who worked with white northern abolitionists to plot this escape attempt out. it was part of the underground railroad, and it turned out to be the largest attempted slave escape ever in american history. the pearl left the harbor but met with light winds on the potomac. that slowed it down. got to the chesapeake and then the winds were too heavy to enter the bay. still, they might have made it to freedom in the north but for a turncoat in the black community back in washington who informed on them. that got the owners on their tail sooner instead of later. they caught up with them and hauled the pearl back to washington, and those slaves

aboard faced the fate they most dreaded which was sale to the deep south and permanent separation from home and family. now, another thing that paul jennings did soon after he achieved his freedom was to march himself down to the photographer's studio and sit for his degaer type. here he is on the cover. and let me tell you how i discovered this image. it is the only known likeness of any month montpelier slave. i worked to, um, seek out jennings' direct descendants, and i had tips to the living direct descendants of two of jennings' children but none for his son franklin. when i finally cracked that line, it led me to sylvia

jennings alexander. she was 93 years old when i had the privilege of meeting her, and she was the keeper of the jennings family oral tradition. and on her living room wall was this likeness of paul jennings. mrs. alexander lived another year and a half after i met her, and though she had physical maladies when i first met her, her mind was sharp as a tack, and her memories that she learned from her grandfather franklin, franklin lived to be 90, and so she heard right from franklin many of the family stories that go back to slavery days. and she very much enriched my story and also my own personal experience. by the way, she shared many family photographs with me, and "a slave in the white house" has over 20 photographs and maps and other graphics, but there were

many more that couldn't go into the book, and i hope you will check out the paul jennings web site where many of them have been posted. it's pauljennings.info. but back to this likeness, it didn't take me too long to compare it with the statue of james madison that is here in the madison building of the library of congress. and that, of course, is because madison even as you see jennings here holds a book in his right hand. so james madison was always the statesman with a book under one arm. and it's clear that jennings was proud of his literacy, that he is posing with the prop of his choice, a book. well, here's the last vignette excerpt that i'll read. 31, october, 1854, el at 18th street, northwest watch.

paul jennings appreciated his new home. the a small house on a small piece of ground but of great significance. carpenter john james had owned lot 23, and having divided the land into three parcels, he built three wood-framed houses facing l street. each parcel ran from 84 to 115 feet back to a diagonal alley. jennings purchased the easternmost house for $1,000. he had saved $400 of the purchase price, a substantial down payment. earlier on this day a month after the sale, husband and wife had been at the washington clerk's office where each signed a document borrowing the $of 00 balance -- $600 balance. that is paul signed. december demoan that -- that's jennings' second wife -- applied her mark, acknowledging the same as her husband.

namely, if payments were not made, the property would be forfeited. the arrangement specified quarterly installments of $100 plus interest. coming up with $100 every three months would not be easy. washington was one of the most expensive cities in the world. pension office clerks earning $9-$1800 annually were hard pressed to support their families. jennings' salary was 400. the debt would be satisfied in may, 1856, and paul jennings -- a man legally held as property for 48 years -- would own his piece of land and modest house free and clear for himself and his heirs forever. there was just a scattering of houses in the area. the city's established finer residences ran from capitol hill to the white house, and a small section north and west from there. though it was only a few blocks further on, paul and desdemona's new neighborhood was in the

midst of mar.sh land. if you're book lovers, you will remember that's where until not too long ago there was a borders books. and i would go there and sit in the café, get a coffee and think, hmm, i think i could be sitting at paul jennings' kitchen table right now. [laughter] well, what's interesting, too, is that many of the places where jennings either lived and/or worked are still in washington. the winder building and the patent office building with he worked for the department of the interior, the dolly madison house, the octagon which was the first of temporary white houses after the white house burned, and, of course, the white house it. itself. well, before we get to questions and answers, i want to make a

couple of comments on paul jennings' legacy. james madison wrote of liberty and learning, leaning on each other for their mutual and surest support. like madison jennings applied his learning in the service of liberty. he secured his freedom and his family's future as an intrepid anti-slavery activist. he forged passes and free papers for slaves, was an operative in a major attempted slave escape, and he raised funds for slaves in peril. by helping, thus helping to purchase them from their masters. ..