...
Several had their slave pens
quite near what is now the FAA building, while others notoriously used the DC
City Jail. They and the local constables held and then illegally sold slaves and
free men of color arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts and unable to either prove
their free status or pay for their upkeep while housed at the jail. For years, one
site of the City Jail was, ironically, the current location of the National Law
Enforcement Officers' Memorial, at the corner of 4th and G Streets, NW. That
corner, across from “Meigs Red Barn”, as the Old Pension Office was known, is
where this walking tour of about 2.5 hours, begins.
1. National Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial / one site of the DC City Jail: 4th and
G St, NW Imagine the year is 1850 and night has fallen, cooling the city, just passing
10pm. You are a Jewish businessman, newly arrived from Baltimore, passing by the
City Jail on your way to 7th street to meet an associate. You cross paths with a welldressed
colored man being led into the jail in irons. He bows courteously to you as
you pass by, and you wonder why he could have been arrested. You remember being
told that the colored residents of this city, even when free, faced grave difficulties, and
to be particularly careful not to discuss abolition, given the disturbances of 15 years
ago. How, you ask yourself, can public constables, sworn to uphold the law, also be
the paid agents of private slave traders? And what to do if ordered to help stop a
fleeing slave, given the Rambam's position that one must not return a slave to his
master? You hear the strains of a song, lifted up in a rich pain-filled contralto from
somewhere nearby singing “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a
motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home...”