4. The Pentagon was built on land occupied by the descendants of former slaves.
During the Civil War, a settlement known as Freedman’s Village sprung up on Robert E. Lee’s former estate, as escaped slaves made their way to the non-Union held territory. Twenty yeas after the war, these settlements were uprooted, and several predominately black neighborhoods, including Queen City and the seedier, red-light district of Hell’s Bottom, formed nearby in what became known as East Arlington. When the Pentagon’s planners realized that the original site selected for the massive complex was not large enough, the government agreed to evict more than 150 families from East Arlington and appropriate their land.
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