The I Index

A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House

Maybe someday

41

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

64/100

Critics

17/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Jonathan W. White

Publisher:

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Date:

February 12, 2022

An exploration of President Lincoln's visits with African Americans invited to White House during America's most divided and war-torn years. Associate Professor Jonathan White illuminates why Lincoln's welcome of African Americans to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States, using the White House as the stage to empower Black voices in America's most divisive era.

What The Reviewers Say

Roberta E. Winter,
New York Journal of Books
... a more complete picture of Lincoln.
Drew Gallagher,
The Free Lance-Star
... [an] important book.
Randall M. Miller,
Library Journal
An original and revealing book on a subject heretofore surprisingly missing from the large Lincoln literature..
John Rowen,
Booklist
White describes, movingly, Lincoln’s meetings with many African Americans of all backgrounds, providing brief biographies of each participant and describing the conversation and its aftermath. Readers will perceive the sacred and the profane in White’s accounts of the historical context for these encounters. During this era, politicians, journalists, and the public often used biblical references in framing their opinions, yet their commentary was also laced with racial epithets..