Easter Egg Roll at the White House: A Time Capsule of America’s Racial and Religious History

By Emma Cieslik
M.A. ’23, Museum Studies

This black-and-white printed postcard depicts ornately dressed children and adults exploring the White House grounds on Easter Monday 1898. The event took place exactly twenty years after President Rutherford B. Hayes issued an order that if any child wished to come to the White House to roll their Easter eggs, they could do so. The tradition of the Easter Egg Roll continues to this day, with limited tickets available to the public as of 2022, but this photograph can tell us a great deal about the history of American religion and race in the late 19th century based on who and what we see.

The “Easter Egg Roll” tradition originally began in the late 1880s as children from the District of Columbia area gathered to roll eggs down Capitol Hill. In response, Congress passed a law in 1876 forbidding the use of Capitol land as a children’s playground. Children marched into the White House in 1885 hoping for an audience with President Grover Cleveland about the issue, and soon after, Egg Rolls at the White House became a tradition that continues to this day. Festivities have evolved over the years, including the addition of music nine years prior to this photo, when President Benjamin Harrison ordered the U.S. Marine Band to play lively music. When this photograph was taken, President William McKinley had just entered office about a month prior to the Easter event. Children and adults of all backgrounds were welcomed onto the lawn, but clothing and companions often indicated social status, like that of the bonneted child in the center. As The San Francisco Call described about the event on April 10, 1898:

“All sorts and conditions of children find their way to the president’s grounds to enjoy
Easter Monday. Some of the children are beautifully dressed in silks and laces and have
French nurses to watch over them and carry their eggs for them, while other little ones
are dressed in very shabby garments with elbows out and toes peeping from their little
shoes.”

The San Francisco Call

This photograph is unique in that it depicts a young Black boy and white girl on the lawn. This is one of only two existing images showing both Black and white children participating in the Easter Egg Roll in the late 19th century. Earlier in the 19th century, both free and enslaved African Americans worked at the White House, until the 1850s, when much of the White House staff switched to European domestic workers, about the same time as Black entertainers were invited by Harrison in the White House.

This young man’s presence at the event is significant as the Egg Roll was one of the few public events where Black children were allowed to participate in the late 19th century. Although D.C. previously existed deep in slaveholding country prior to the Civil War, it stood apart from the Reconstruction South that prohibited Black and white children to congregate together in public spaces, including libraries and schools. This involvement would be taken away from Black children by 1953 when Mamie Eisenhower questioned why they remained outside the White House gates while white children continued rolling their eggs inside.

Although nothing this young man is wearing alludes to his religious identity, census records can suggest what he most likely practiced, if he was religious at all. At this time in history, the United States witnessed intense growth of historically Black Protestant churches, specifically the African Methodist Episcopal Church founded in 1816. The AME Church cemented its place by sending missionaries to the South, leading many Black Christians (some of whom were forced to convert and elected to remain with this religion after the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863) to leave mostly white churches.

From right before the Civil War to 1884, the AME Church’s attendance had increased twenty-fold to more than 400,000 members, and the U.S. Census Bureau had counted almost 2.7 million Black congregation members at Christian churches in 1890. This boy could have been a Christian congregation member of a historically Black church, but we cannot know for sure.

Another possibility is that this young man was Muslim. Prior to forced enslavement, many Black individuals in West and Central African practiced traditional West African religions or Islam—it wouldn’t be until the early 1900s that Islam began attracting thousands of Black Americans back to the religion, although it was estimated by enslaved African scholar Omar Ibn Said that one-third of all enslaved individuals were Muslim. Many Muslim enslaved individuals continued their religion in secret generation after generation in the US—estimates indicate that at least 10 percent of West African enslaved individuals in the United States were Muslim, so the African Islamic population in 1898 was also likely increasing.

While this photograph documents the young man’s presence, it does raise pertinent questions about who was not present at the event that did, notably children whose families were not Christian or did not seek to be involved in a Christian holiday. Although the Easter bunny emerged as a symbol of the holiday as early as the 16th century, commercialization of Easter did not occur until the second half of the 20th century, indicating that this celebration on the White House lawn was largely still Christian-affiliated. Census and religious organization records indicate that many other religious groups were present in the United States at the time of this photograph and likely felt excluded without a religious equivalent.

While Christianity was in the majority in 1898, as it continues to be today, Judaism and Islam were gaining ground with increased immigration in the late 19th century, especially from Europe. Between 1848 and 1880, the number of Jewish individuals in the United States more than tripled following the second largest wave of immigration in United States history. More than 400,000 were estimated in the United States in 1888. The White House would not start holding its annual Hanukkah Party until 2001.

Other religious communities, including Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, were less prevalent in the 1890s. Padma Rangaswamy, an Indian immigration scholar, estimated there were just over 700 Indian immigrants to the United States between 1820 and 1900. Indian immigration was likely driven by colonial land tenure system, food storages, and droughts, which increased right about the time of this photograph in the 1890s.

Buddhism was particularly prevalent on the west coast, increasing from eight Buddhist temples in 1975 to 400 by 1900. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 limited Chinese immigration but Japanese immigration boomed in the late 1800s, around the time of this photograph. As much of this immigration affected the west coast, it is likely why there are no Asian Americans featured in the photograph.

While this photograph showcases certain types of diversity—including racial and economic inclusion and was groundbreaking for its integration of government-sponsored events and female photojournalism, it raises questions about the past and present hegemony of Christian traditions at the White House. The Gold Star Tree, the White House commemorative Christmas ornament, Christmas parties for residence staff, and the Easter Egg Roll highlight a slanted tendency towards Christian celebrations that persist to this day. While both holidays Christmas and Easter—are largely secularized, their religious roots still speak to who did and did not participate in these traditions, i.e., who isn’t in this picture, in 1898.