The White House: a slave's view: the discovery of a memoir by one of President Madison's slaves sheds light on the role slavery once played in the White House.

• Author: Swarns, Rachel L.
• Position: NATIONAL - Paul Jennings' A Colored Man's Reminiscences o f James Madison

n 1809, a young boy from a wealthy Virginia estate stepped into President James Madison's White House and caught the first glimpse of his new home. The East Room was unfinished, he recalled years later in a memoir. Pennsylvania Avenue was unpaved and "always in an awful condition from either mud or dust," he recounted.

"The city was a dreary place," he continued.

The boy's name was Paul Jennings, and when he first walked into the Executive Mansion, he was a 10-year-old slave.

Over the course of his long life, Jennings witnessed, and per haps participated in, the rescue of George Washington's portrait from the White House during the War of 1812 and stood by Madison's side at his deathbed. He bought his freedom, helped organize a daring (but unsuccessful) slave escape, and became the first person to put his White House recollections into a memoir.

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This summer, Jennings's story took center stage when dozens of his descendants gathered for a reunion in the White House. It was a remarkable moment in the history of the mansion, which was built with slave labor and is now home to Barack Obama, the nation's first black President, and his family.

New details about Jennings's life and family have emerged through the research of Beth Taylor at Montpelier, the Madison plantation in Virginia. Over the past two years, Taylor has pored over court records and tracked down and interviewed his descendants, discovering historical documents and the only known photograph of Jennings (below). Taylor also found a rare edition of his recollections, released in 1865 under the title A Colored Man's Reminiscences o f James Madison.

The visit by Jennings's descendants highlighted the day-to-day role that slaves once played in the White House.

"It really is a story that isn't well-told yet," says Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the Smith sonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. "It lets people realize just how big a shadow slavery cast on America."

Slavery was legal in Washington, D.C., from the time it became the nation's capital in 1800. In fact, the city was a major center for the slave trade, with thousands of slaves passing through on their way to plantations further south. Congress didn't outlaw slavery in Washington until 1862.

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Few historical records exist about the black people who lived and worked in the White House in its early

years, according to the White House curator. Slaves were barred...