We are excited to announce that JMC fellow Jonathan White has been named a co-recipient of the prestigious 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his recent book, A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House. JMC’s Resident Historian and Editorial Manager Elliott Drago sat down to interview Dr. White earlier this May.
ED: Thank you for taking the time to discuss your tremendous and important book! Many Americans may not realize how Abraham Lincoln’s meetings with African Americans at the White House had a major impact on his political career and life. Can you explain how you came to this project, and the types of sources and questions that drove your research?
JW: I started collecting letters from African Americans to Lincoln in 2014. These correspondents saw Lincoln as a president who was concerned with their lives and with what concerned them. I put the letters into a book called To Address You as My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln (2021). A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022) grew out of that project. In these two books I wanted to recapture a historical moment, because today Lincoln gets a lot of criticism from many different areas of American society. Many African Americans today seem to have a sense of suspicion when it comes to Lincoln. But it hasn’t always been that way. When Lincoln died in 1865, African Americans mourned more deeply than white Americans did. And that was because of the relationship that had developed between Lincoln and Black Americans during the war.
