{"id":46562,"date":"2016-04-11T02:25:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T02:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46562"},"modified":"2016-11-20T01:18:03","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T01:18:03","slug":"thomas-jefferson-spent-years-raping-his-slave-sally-hemings-a-new-novel-treats-their-relationship-as-a-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46562","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Jefferson spent years raping his slave Sally Hemings. A new novel treats their relationship as a love story."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/4\/8\/11389556\/thomas-jefferson-sally-hemings-book\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Jefferson spent years raping his slave Sally Hemings. A new novel treats their relationship as a love story.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\" target=\"_blank\">Vox<\/a><br \/>\n2016-04-08<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/constancegrady\" target=\"_blank\">Constance Grady<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A new historical novel about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Jefferson\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Jefferson<\/a> is raising eyebrows.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenoconnor.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stephen O\u2019Connor\u2019s<\/a> <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46549\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings<\/a><\/em>, which came out on Tuesday, is about our third president\u2019s relationship with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sally_Hemings\" target=\"_blank\">Sally Hemings<\/a>, his slave. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/shows\/jefferson\/true\/\" target=\"_blank\">DNA evidence has proved<\/a> that Jefferson and Hemings had six children together while Jefferson kept Hemings enslaved \u2014 and Jefferson also enslaved their children, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monticello.org\/site\/plantation-and-slavery\/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-brief-account\" target=\"_blank\">freeing them one by one as they came of age<\/a>. To further complicate matters, Sally Hemings was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monticello.org\/site\/plantation-and-slavery\/sally-hemings\" target=\"_blank\">half-sister to Jefferson\u2019s late wife<\/a>, the product of a relationship between Jefferson&#8217;s father-in-law and one of his slaves.<\/p>\n<p>By all accounts, Jefferson\u2019s sexual relationship with 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. What Jefferson did to Hemings was rape.<\/p>\n<p>But <em>Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings<\/em>, judging from early reviews, is most interested in exploring potential ambiguities of their relationship. The book wonders: Did Hemings perhaps enjoy it? To what extent was she complicit?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/4\/8\/11389556\/thomas-jefferson-sally-hemings-book\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019Connor\u2019s Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings, which came out on Tuesday, is about our third president\u2019s relationship with Sally Hemings, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6940,20],"tags":[23503,918,23491,477,18116],"class_list":["post-46562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-constance-grady","tag-sally-hemings","tag-stephen-oconnor","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-vox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46562","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=46562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46563,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46562\/revisions\/46563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}