OVERLOOKED PEOPLE WHO DESERVE TO BE REMEMBERED

Philip Reed, The Enslaved Man Who Rescued Freedom

Lantern of the dome of the United States Capitol, Washington D. C. by Andreas Praefcke

In January 2009, a man who had vanished into the mists of history made a brief reappearance with the historic inauguration of Barack Obama. The man was Philip Reid, and if you google his name along with Obama’s, you’ll find dozens of articles that share the little-known history of Reid, the formerly enslaved individual who made it possible to erect the statue of Freedom that remains on the top of the Capitol dome today. The year was 1863 and Reid had only gained his freedom (by virtue of the D.C. Emancipation Act) on April 16th of the previous year.

Only his name wasn’t Reid; it was Reed. That might seem like a minor detail, but Reid is how his enslaver, Clark Mills, spelled his name. Reed — as in freed — is how he himself spelled it — and when you accomplish something of that magnitude, something that is still noteworthy 158 years later, you deserve to have your name recorded correctly. You also deserve to have your story told, so I decided to see what I could learn about Philip Reed’s life.

The Enslaved Who Built the Capitol

I confess that I had never heard of Philip Reed until shortly before the inauguration. In the weeks leading up to that momentous day, I received quite a few calls from members of the…