The preamble of the declaration of independence is one of the most recited lines in political text. While writing these famous lines, a young Black stood in the corner possibly not knowing that this man was codifying language that would be used against his ancestry for hundreds of years. Weaponized during the Modern Civil Rights movement, the preamble was wielded as a sharp decider of who gets access to the ballot and who doesn’t.
Many of us know the third president of the United States as the man who helped craft one of the most important documents necessary for the foundation of this new nation. Later in his life, he would make a remarkable agreement with a teenage Black girl that is still the subject of study to this day. What agreement did this teen make with this president who held over 600 people in bondage over his lifetime that ensured the release of her progeny decades later? What’s more curious is that little boy is related to the Hemings, a family that is as intertwined with Jefferson’s legacy as one could possibly get, and as much as I would love us to go into the family tree, we are going to focus on one Hemings, Ms. Sally Hemings.
In this session, we are going to look at the complexity of life in slavery when you are held by one of the most powerful men in the world, the brilliant circumstantial planning a young teenage girl navigated that solidified the freedom of her offspring decades later and how that unwanted union that is still being debated to this day.
Remember, please read what you are able to. There are short video clips to break up some of the information so please feel free to hop around and read what draws your interest.
Register here in advance for this session: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkfuqsrTojHNBBA0Br_WBqRLAntN7UzmA_
Thomas Jefferson and Monticello:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/ (if you can only read one, this one is recommended to get a full picture)
Sally Hemings and the Hemings family:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/sally-hemings-exhibit-monticello.html (Review from the opening of the Sally Hemings exhibit)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gm3HtijrMQ (~9 minutes)
Interactive:
https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/a-virtual-tour-of-thomas-jefferson-s-monticello-thomas-jefferson-foundation-at-monticello/BwLCQp37dmAcKw?hl=en (A virtual tour of the grounds of Monticello)
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/slavery-in-the-thomas-jefferson-white-house (recommended look at how the White House talks about slavery within its walls)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAH2gPsMh94 (Shannon LaNair, Jefferson’s 6x great-grandson interviewed in 2021. ~10 mins)
Additional information (optional):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uCvaTV-L0U (Oprah interviews Black and white descendants in 1998. ~40)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/american-descendants-180975155/
https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/deed-manumission-robert-hemings