Fittingly, as the celebration of Black History Month comes to a close, the grounds of the onetime estate of Margaret Barber, one of the largest slave owners in the District of Columbia, will soon welcome a new occupant. Once the renovations at Number One Observatory Circle are complete, it will become the official residence of Kamala D. Now, almost 40 years since Mondale and Ferraro’s loss, history is being made at the vice president’s residence. Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, the first major-party candidate to select a woman for the position. The fawning account simply notes that Barber “expended great effort and anguish” to validate her compensation claims and that she “not only had to make the routine visits” with her slaves but had to “be examined herself about each one.”Ī few years after the Washington Historical Society recounted Barber’s fight to gain compensation for her 34 freed slaves, Congress agreed to refurbish the grounds of the Naval Observatory and make the Queen Anne-style home, constructed in 1893 after Barber’s sale, the permanent residence of the vice president. In January 1977, Walter Mondale became the first vice president to live there. Later, as the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee, he chose Rep. Of another person - again, a living, breathing human being - her claim contends, “Some of these defects are slight, and do not materially impair the value or usefulness of the Negro.”Įven a century later, in a piece published by the Washington Historical Society in 1964, it is distressing to see virtually no recognition of the injustice and outright cruelty of her ownership of other human beings.

It speaks in an unflinching, and inhuman, way of slave Mortimer Briscoe who “had one of his toes frost bitten but is otherwise sound” and of two other enslaved men who “are remarkably strong, healthy and capable Negroes.” 2 slave owner. But first, a bit of unpleasant history.īarber, a widow, owned 34 slaves. Almost 160 years later, her matter-of-fact compensation filing to a federal commission is painful to read. Barber, whose $9,351.30 compensation reflected her status as the District’s No. Slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia by an act of Congress signed by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862. In a cruelly bitter twist, the act appropriated $1 million for the compensation of “loyal owners” (no Confederates) for their slaves, at a rate not to exceed $300 for each.Īn even greater irony has now emerged on the onetime estate of Margaret C.

Number one observatory circle