Black Hands, White House
Slave Labor and the Making of America
In Black Hands, White House author Renee K. Harrison documents the role enslaved women and men played in building the US. In addition to building the country’s physical infrastructure, she reviews how their work enriched the material wealth of this nation and its founding fathers and bolstered the wealth of present-day companies founded during the American slave era.
Given the enslaved community’s contribution to the United States, Harrison questions the absence of memorials that honor enslaved, Black-bodied people, arguing that such monuments are necessary to redress the nation’s historical disregard of Black people.
In exploring how nation-building and racism combined to create racial disparity, readers are better able to significantly discuss race relations, history-making, reparations, and monument erection and removal.
