Tag: Sally Hemings

  • Not many private relationships in history have received as much press attention in recent years as that between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. First alleged in 1802 by the journalist James Callender, who based his account on stories that had been current in Virginia for some years, the affair has since then been…

  • A president’s past yields a modern parable The Berkshire Eagle Pittsfield, Massachusetts 2017-01-24 Jenn Smith A tree is planted and dedicated to the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings, at Monticello’s Mulberry Row. Mulberry Row was the center of activity of Jefferson’s 5,000-acre agricultural enterprise. According to the Monticello website, it was…

  • Jefferson’s Children: The Story of One American Family Random House December 2002 160 pages Hardcover ISBN: 978-0195031720 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-375-82168-4 Shannon Lanier and Jane Feldman Personal testimonies from descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings pose important questions about equality, freedom, and family. On October 31, 1998, the Associated Press broke the news that…

  • The Strange and Ironic Fates of Jefferson’s Daughters The Daily Beast 2016-09-17 Sally Cabot Gunning Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast Martha Jefferson was Virginia elite. Her half-sister Harriet, though seven-eighths white, was deemed a slave at birth. No one could have predicted their fates. Martha Jefferson was born in 1772, just as Monticello…

  • ‘Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings’ reimagines difficult history The Chicago Tribune 2016-07-23 Meredith Maran “Until the lions have their own historians,” says an African proverb, “the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” The proverb offers one answer to a question that has long plagued writers, activists and historians. Who gets to…

  • The Agonizing Collision Of Love And Slavery In ‘Thomas Jefferson’ Book Reviews National Public Radio 2016-04-06 Jean Zimmerman Did Thomas Jefferson dream of his enslaved concubine, Sally Hemings? No one knows. Jefferson himself never wrote a word about his constant companion of almost 40 years. But author Stephen O’Connor gives us a brave and wondrous…

  • For Independence Day, a Look at Thomas Jefferson’s Egregious Hypocrisy The Scientific American 2016-07-01 John Horgan “While many of his contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the revolution—inspired, perhaps, by the words of the Declaration–Jefferson did not,” historian Paul Finkelman writes. “Jefferson also “dodged opportunities to undermine slavery or promote racial…

  • By all accounts, [Thomas] Jefferson’s sexual relationship with [Sally] Hemings spanned several decades, beginning when Hemings was a teenager and Jefferson was in his 40s. It was not, in any sense of the word, consensual: Hemings was a child, and Jefferson literally owned her; she was not in any position to give or withhold consent.…

  • Thomas Jefferson spent years raping his slave Sally Hemings. A new novel treats their relationship as a love story. Vox 2016-04-08 Constance Grady A new historical novel about Thomas Jefferson is raising eyebrows. Stephen O’Connor’s Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings, which came out on Tuesday, is about our third president’s relationship with Sally Hemings,…

  • Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings: A Novel Viking Books 2016-04-05 624 pages Hardcover ISBN: 9780525429968 Ebook ISBN: 9780698410336 Stephen O’Connor A debut novel about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, in whose story the conflict between the American ideal of equality and the realities of slavery and racism played out in the most tragic of…