{"id":35594,"date":"2014-01-23T22:53:47","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T22:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35594"},"modified":"2015-01-17T20:48:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T20:48:01","slug":"cousins-across-the-color-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35594","title":{"rendered":"Cousins, Across the Color Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cousins, Across the Color Line<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-01-22<\/p>\n

Tess Taylor<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL CERRITO, Calif. \u2014 I learned about her through the comments section of an article in Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/em>. I had recently published a book of poems crafted out of family stories, and it had been written up, along with a brief interview. In the interview, I reckon with the complicated history of my family \u2014 I am a white descendant of Thomas Jefferson<\/a> \u2014 and the fact that some of my ancestors were slave owners from 1670 until the Civil War<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the comments section, the woman, Gayle Jessup White, had written: \u201cI am an African-American Jefferson descendant. My grandmother was a Taylor (although her mother didn\u2019t exactly marry into the family!), a direct descendant from J.C. Randolph Taylor and Martha Jefferson Randolph<\/a>\u201d \u2014 Thomas Jefferson\u2019s daughter. \u201cTess Taylor \u2014 I wonder if we share great-great-grandparents? The plot thickens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story of Sally Hemings<\/a>, a slave in the Jefferson household \u2014 and the children she most likely bore the third president \u2014 is by now widely accepted. That story has offered a chance for people descended from slave owners and those descended from enslaved people to begin to recognize their connections. But the situation, at least in my family, remains delicate. Some white Jefferson descendants have welcomed Hemings descendants. Others have not. Hemings descendants are not allowed to be buried in the family graveyard at Monticello<\/a>, Jefferson\u2019s home, because despite increased evidence, there is, technically, room for scientific doubt. The doubt in turn points to great historical violence: Because it was not the custom of slave owners to name who fathered the mulatto<\/a> children on their plantations, we have little documentary evidence that would constitute legal \u201cproof\u201d of our interrelationship.<\/p>\n

Yet the fact is that many so-called white and so-called black people in our country are actually deeply interrelated.<\/strong> It is highly likely that I have distant cousins I\u2019ll never know, people who\u2019ll never come to any family reunion. Historians have obsessed over Jefferson\u2019s possible liaisons, but slavery lasted many generations. Among his sons, grandsons, great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons, there were bound to be other liaisons and therefore other direct lineal descendants of Jefferson and enslaved people or domestic servants.<\/p>\n

I wrote to Gayle immediately. Frankly, I was delighted to get her note. I looked her up. I sent her an email. \u201cHey. It\u2019s Tess,\u201d I wrote. \u201cLet\u2019s talk.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire opinion piece here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cousins, Across the Color Line The New York Times 2014-01-22 Tess Taylor EL CERRITO, Calif. \u2014 I learned about her through the comments section of an article in Publisher\u2019s Weekly. I had recently published a book of poems crafted out of family stories, and it had been written up, along with a brief interview. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,6940,20,693],"tags":[16835,2640,918,16834,2327,477],"class_list":["post-35594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-gayle-jessup-white","tag-new-york-times","tag-sally-hemings","tag-tess-taylor","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-thomas-jefferson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}