Episode 3: Slavery and Civil Rights

Sarah Fling discusses the connections that early first ladies had to slavery and how few first ladies have engaged with civil rights.

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TRANSCRIPT

Teri Finneman: Eleanor. Dolley. Mamie. Jackie. They were the nation’s original influencers. Some were fearless, some were fragile. All left their mark on the nation’s history. In this podcast, we'll reflect on the fascinating legacies of the women forever tied to the White House. I'm your host, Teri Finneman, a journalism historian who studies media portrayals of first ladies with production editing by Bella Koscal. This is the First Ladies podcast.

About one-third of America's first ladies are connected in some way to slave ownership, beginning with Martha Washington. Throughout U.S. history, presidents and first ladies enforced segregation and often ignored pleas for racial equality. In today's episode, we're joined by Sarah Fling, a historian for the White House Historical Association, discussing her book chapter about first ladies, slavery, and civil rights.

Sarah, welcome to the show. Why did you become interested in studying first ladies?

Sarah Fling (1:14):  Oh gosh, I've always had an interest in women's history in general, but I really came to my interest in first ladies through my public history work after I graduated from American University’s MA program.

I started working at the White House Historical Association and I had previously interned at George Washington's Mount Vernon, so I had these experiences that drew me toward first ladies, and my love of women's history made it a clear outcropping of the work that I had already done. But it's so interesting, and there's so much to learn about so many women that I feel like I keep going down the rabbit hole of more and more first ladies and topics related to them.

Teri Finneman (1:57): Well, you mentioned Mount Vernon, so that certainly ties into our discussion today. Your chapter explores the connection between first ladies and slavery and first ladies and civil rights. Why were you interested in this topic?

Sarah Fling: I definitely started exploring the idea of first ladies in slavery through that internship at Mount Vernon and thinking about Martha Washington and Mount Vernon, but the interest specifically really ties into my work at the association. When I first joined five years ago, we were in the midst of launching our “Slavery in the President's Neighborhood” initiative, which is a research project that seeks to tell the stories of enslaved workers at the White House.

And I realized in doing this research and working with my colleagues that while presidents have really had a reckoning based off of their relationship to enslaved people and their role in the institution of slavery, first ladies is a topic that's a bit less explored.

(2:51) There's been some great work out there done by historians like Marie Jenkins Schwartz and Amy Greenberg, but there's still more to do. So that's how I got into this topic, and I really see first ladies and civil rights as a continuation of that work and thinking about first ladies in race, more generally, and which first ladies have benefited the Black community through their work, and which have done the opposite and have contributed perhaps to ideas of white supremacy or participated in slavery.

Teri Finneman (3:21): You focus on a few first ladies in particular and their histories with slavery, so let's start off with Dolley Madison. Explain her long ties to slavery.

Sarah Fling: Yeah, Dolley Madison is such an interesting example because I think she's one of the best-known first ladies, and there's good documentation about her relationship to enslaved people and her life with James Madison. Dolley is born into a slave-owning family, but it's an interesting dynamic because her parents are Quakers, so later she becomes familiar with abolition through their manumission of the enslaved people they own.

(3:56) But it's through her second marriage, which is to James Madison, of course, that she becomes really involved in the institution of slavery. She moves to his plantation, Montpelier, and begins to manage the enslaved people there, which number over 100, and they both later bring enslaved workers to the White House with them, something that happens with many slave-owning presidents and first ladies.

Now, Dolley Madison's relationship with slavery continues past James Madison's death, and even after he passes, she decides to sell Montpelier because of her massive debt, and fragments numerous families in this process. So, Dolley has this really complicated relationship with slavery that can show the cruelty that first ladies have participated in through the institution itself.

Teri Finneman: You know, if anyone knows anything about Dolley Madison, it tends to be two things. One, that she was a great hostess, and two, that she allegedly saved the portrait of George Washington right before the British burned the White House. Both of these narratives have erased the roles of enslaved workers. So, let's start with the hostess role first: who is assisting her behind the scenes to make her reputation possible?

Sarah Fling (5:08): Absolutely. You know, you think of Dolley and you think of her grand parties at the White House, her acumen and bringing together political adversaries in what Catherine Allgor calls parlor politics, and one of the major parts of hosting, or hostessing in this case, is your appearance, right?

And Dolley Madison is known for her queen-like appearances, the turbans and headwear that she had. But this is impossible without the labor of a woman named Sukey, who was Dolley Madison's enslaved lady’s maid, and Sukey was with Mrs. Madison for decades.

She plays a really important and intimate role in her time as first lady because Sukey would have dressed her and bathed her and done her hair, so her appearance is all attributed to Sukey. But more generally, if you want to host a party at the White House, if you want to host a dinner, a reception, a ball, that relies on laborers and butlers and dining room servants and cooks, and in the case of the Madisons, we know, for example, that a man named Paul Jennings served not only as President Madison's valet, but also as a dining room servant. So, if you were coming to an event at the Madison White House, enslaved laborers are making that event possible.

Teri Finneman (6:19): Yeah, so let's expand on who you were just talking about. There's the famous story of saving Washington's portrait. There's another version of that story. Tell us about it.

Sarah Fling: Yes, so this goes back to Paul Jennings, the man I just mentioned, who was President Madison’s enslaved valet and a dining room servant at the White House. So, for many, many years, centuries, in fact, there's been the famous story that Dolley Madison heroically and personally saved the portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, but we know, thanks to the memoir that Paul Jennings later wrote called A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, that the story is a little bit more nuanced.

(6:58) Now, he writes that the story that Mrs. Madison cut from the frame, the portrait herself, and carried it off, is totally false, and that instead this should be attributed to two White House workers: a gardener named Thomas Magraw, sometimes called McGrath in documentation, and the steward, Jean Pierre Sioussat.

So, he shows in this memoir that the story is a bit more complicated and also returns the roles of the laborers to this story, the fact that enslaved people witnessed the burning of the White House and that these free workers were those who actually carried out the work itself.

Teri Finneman: I want to talk next briefly about Sarah Polk, who I've also studied. Although no one today knows anything about her, she was a powerful Hillary Clinton-like first lady back in her day, a really strong force in the White House who spent her life aiding her husband's political career. But there's also no question that owning slaves made that political life financially possible for the Polks. Talk about their connections with slavery, both inside and outside the White House.

Sarah Fling (8:00): Absolutely. Sarah Polk is such an interesting first lady, and as you mentioned, people just don't know much about her, but her entire life is marked by the institution of slavery. She's born into a slave-owning family, she inherits enslaved people as part of her wedding dowry to James K. Polk, and the two of them are able to embark on this political partnership together because of the income that they receive through enslaved labor.

They own several properties both in Tennessee and in Mississippi, and benefit from that labor. Now as first lady, she's bringing enslaved people to work at the White House. In fact, she hires, or fires I should say, several white servants to bring in enslaved laborers because she doesn't have to pay them out of pocket in the same way she would white workers.

And we also know that she mediates conversations and sales of enslaved children between her husband and her brother during his time as president, and this is something that's kept from the American people. So, during her time as first lady, Sarah Polk is highly involved in these conversations and the sale of enslaved people.

(9:08) But then later, after leaving the White House, James K. Polk passes away from cholera and Sarah Polk really becomes a Southern widowed slave mistress, and this comes with a lot of power, in fact, for Sarah. She's really involved in the business of slavery at this point in her life. There are letters between Sarah and overseers discussing the punishment of enslaved people on these plantations, the behavior and health and output of their work, so we can really see that she is involved in this agricultural business of slavery in these final years of her life.

And then of course, you write, Teri, about her interesting relationship at the end of her life to the Confederacy during the Civil War. Sarah claimed to be neutral, but in fact helps the Confederacy in many ways and contributes to the “Lost Cause” myth, even after her death.

Teri Finneman (10:03): Moving on, after the Polks and after the Civil War, you note first ladies in the following decades did little to nothing to advance civil rights. Those like Lou Hoover, who made the smallest of gestures by inviting a Black guest to the White House, faced tremendous blowback. Eleanor Roosevelt was really the first first lady to take more of a stand. Tell us about some of her actions.

Sarah Fling: Yes, Eleanor Roosevelt is a really interesting case study because she's so different from her predecessors. As you mentioned, you see many of these first ladies choose not to take a stance on civil rights because it's a politically complex topic. Many presidents avoided speaking on it, so as a result, it's not shocking that first ladies chose less political causes to support at this time, but Eleanor Roosevelt was unafraid to go against what President Roosevelt thought or said on topics related to race relations in the United States.

(11:00) He famously hesitated on civil rights for fear of losing Southern Democrats and their support for his New Deal programs, but Eleanor acted as a real conduit between Black leaders and the president, bringing concerns about racial violence or segregation and government programs right to his desk.

She formed really close relationships with Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Both of them brought recommendations and requests to her and she shared them with the president.

But I think one of the most interesting examples of Eleanor’s activism in relation to civil rights is her support of the Costigan-Wagner Bill, which was a bill going through Congress for anti-lynching legislation and many Black community leaders had been asking presidents to speak out in favor of anti-lynching laws, but it had not had any success up to that point.

(11:57) Eleanor took this to the president's desk. She pressed him many times to support it. She even set up meetings between President Roosevelt and Walter White, but unfortunately, FDR ultimately did not throw his support behind the bill, and the bill failed. So, this is one example that I think really shows her activism on the topic and the fact that she was willing to listen to what the Black community wanted and what they needed in terms of civil rights, rather than just acting of her own accord.

Teri Finneman: People nowadays see Eleanor as such a popular first lady, and I think a lot of them assume that she always has been and don't really recognize the reaction she got during her time. So, how did the public respond to her civil rights stances?

Sarah Fling: Yes, that's a great question. You know, you look at polls today where people are asked about who's the best first lady or the most popular, and Eleanor Roosevelt tops the polls every time. But she certainly was not the universally beloved first lady then, that we know her as today.

(12:57) Now it is true that she gained support, especially from the Black community, for this action. Some historians credit the win in 1936 for the Democrats to Eleanor Roosevelt's activism. It was the first time that African American voters had majority left behind the party of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans to vote for a Democrat in the White House, but Eleanor Roosevelt also received massive backlash, specifically from white supremacists and racists in the American South.

If you look at press or at conversations held at the time in the South, she's being made fun of. There are even threats to her life that come out of this period. So, Eleanor is not universally thanked or beloved for this effort.

Teri Finneman: Moving on to Lady Bird Johnson. Unlike Eleanor, Lady Bird grew up in the South. How did that influence her later views about race?

Sarah Fling (13:55): Yes, Lady Bird Johnson is a really interesting case study because she is a daughter of the South. This is something that she brings up time and again during her time as first lady, during campaign visits to the South, that she is a proud Southerner, and she wants people to know it.

Unlike Eleanor, who is a product of the Northeast, Lady Bird Johnson is born and raised in rural Texas, in a town called Karnack. She's even born in a house that was built by enslaved people. She has Black playmates growing up and a Black nurse named Alice. So, this is the environment that produces Lady Bird Johnson, and she recalls in oral histories and in conversations throughout her life that she remembers seeing racial violence by the KKK in her hometown, that she experienced the truth of segregation when traveling with Black staff and not being able to stay in the same hotels or restaurants as those that she traveled with.

(14:54) So, these are all things that influence and impact who Lady Bird Johnson becomes. But I also think it's important to understand that despite this experience, Lady Bird Johnson never considered herself an activist or an advocate for racial equality in these early years.

It's really something that comes out of her endless support as a partner to Lyndon Johnson, and that his time in the White House is marked by his efforts for the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and that Lady Bird Johnson comes around to really be a supporter of these pieces of legislation through her relationship to President Johnson.

Teri Finneman: Let's talk about her platform, beautification. It's long been misunderstood as just planting flowers. What was she actually trying to achieve?

Sarah Fling: Yes, beautification is often remembered today as something that's merely cosmetic, perhaps a bit frivolous, apolitical, and that simply isn't the case when you look back at the source material. Lady Bird Johnson is bringing together environmentalism with two of the big platforms of President Johnson's time in the White House.

(16:06) It's anti-poverty, and the War on Poverty that he's building through the Great Society, as well as his civil rights work, and they all come together through beautification. So, while it's true that beautification had aspects that were about planting flowers and planting trees, a lot of Lady Bird’s efforts are actually focused on Washington, D.C.'s, Black communities, and that's something that comes out of her relationship with future Washington, D.C., Mayor Walter Washington.

He encourages her to fuel these efforts in her hometown at the time of Washington, D.C., and so instead of just planting flowers in these majority Black neighborhoods, it's the idea of creating recreation spaces, improving schools and schoolyards, and the idea that investing in these communities that have long been overlooked creates a better America.

(16:59) So beautification is about people, not flowers, as I always like to say, and Lady Bird is really drawing in ideas of racial equality when she makes these choices with her platform.

Teri Finneman: What do you think are additional avenues that still need exploring in relation to first ladies and race relations history in this country?

Sarah Fling: I think there's a lot that could still use exploration on this topic. As I mentioned, it's more common to see presidents considered in terms of their work on civil rights or their influence and impact on the institution of slavery.

So, I really think that more should be done with first ladies in slavery, and there are great scholars out there who are doing this work right now, but even lesser known first ladies need their time in the sun to reckon with their relationship with the institution itself. I also think, in terms of that middle period that we sort of talked about, the idea of the end of the Civil War and emancipation, the end of slavery in the United States, up to Eleanor Roosevelt's time fighting for civil rights, there is that middle period where many first ladies chose not to act.

(18:10) Documentation shows that some first ladies contributed to things like the “Lost Cause” myth or white supremacy through their own writing or hosting events at the White House or other things that either worsened or benefited the Black community. And I think that period between Eleanor Roosevelt and the end of the Civil War could really use some additional attention from scholars moving forward.

Teri Finneman: And then finally, why do you think studying first ladies matters?

Sarah Fling: Such a good question. At its most basic level, studying women's history matters because women's history is American history. But first ladies are such a unique example of proximity to power and women with influence in the United States, especially at times when other women did not have the same avenues to power. Thinking about people like Dolley Madison and Sarah Polk, who were able to influence politics at a time when other women might have been barred from these important conversations and rooms where things happened, as they say in Hamilton.

(19:15) So, thinking about how first ladies have had the opportunity to influence politics, to influence culture, and to set an example, frankly, for American women of what a woman should aspire to, or behave like, or present themselves as can tell us so much about women's history in general.

So, first lady studies are so important, and there's always so much to learn. As I mentioned in this idea of slavery being a new area of study for first ladies, there's always something new to explore. So, I'm excited to see what scholars bring forward as we continue down this line of study.

Teri Finneman (19:52): All right. Well, thanks so much for joining us today and we certainly appreciate all of the work that you and everybody at the White House Historical Association does to preserve this field.

Sarah Fling: Oh wonderful, thank you so much!

Teri Finneman: We hope you enjoyed the show. Tune in next time to uncover more untold histories of the nation's first ladies. I'm Teri Finneman, and this is The First Ladies podcast.

Show music credit: "Winning Elevation" by Hot_Dope.