Map showing some slave jails in Washington D.C. 1836; the Yellow House was across the street from the site marked as Neal's jail,[1] location covered up with the "Am I not a man and a brother?" graphic

The Yellow House was the slave jail of the Williams brothers (Thomas Williams and William H. Williams) in Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. The Williams' slave-trading business was apparently "large and well-known to traders in Richmond and New Orleans."[2] The three-story building was made of brick covered in yellow-painted plaster and served as a navigation landmark for visitors to the city: "In an era before the memorials to Washington or Jefferson (much less the yet-unknown Lincoln) had been erected, D.C. travelers oriented themselves based on the Yellow House, which stood as a prominent landmark within the nation's capital.[1]

The Yellow House was located across from where the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden stands today.[3] The private prison was in use as a waystation of the interstate slave trade from 1836 to 1850.[4] During his one term in the U.S. Congress, Abraham Lincoln recorded that he could see the building from the U.S. Capitol.[4] A few years earlier, Solomon Northrup, a victim of kidnapping into slavery, could see the Capitol from his cell in the Williams' dungeon.[4]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Forret, Jeff (2020). "Chapter 2: The Yellow House". Williams' Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts. Cambridge University Press. pp. 34–54. doi:10.1017/9781108651912.003. ISBN 978-1-108-65191-2.
  2. ↑ Corrigan, Mary Beth (2001). "Imaginary Cruelties? A History of the Slave Trade in Washington, D.C." Washington History. 13 (2): 4–27. ISSN 1042-9719.
  3. ↑ Forret, Jeff (July 22, 2020). "The Notorious 'Yellow House' That Made Washington, D.C. a Slavery Capital". Smithsonian Magazine.
  4. 1 2 3 Deutsch, James (2020). "D.C.'s Slave Trade Ended Here, Next Door to the Smithsonian". Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Retrieved 2023-12-10.
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