{"id":55620,"date":"2018-01-29T00:05:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T00:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55620"},"modified":"2018-01-29T00:13:44","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T00:13:44","slug":"how-did-we-lose-a-presidents-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55620","title":{"rendered":"How did we lose a president\u2019s daughter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How did we lose a president\u2019s daughter?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2018-01-25<\/p>\n

Catherine Kerrison<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of History
\nVillanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nThomas Jefferson<\/a> is shown in a painting by Rembrandt Peale<\/a>. Jefferson was the father of several children born to Sally Hemings<\/a>, an enslaved woman at Monticello<\/a>, one of whom chose to pass as white<\/a> rather than claim her relation to the president. (AP\/New York Historical Society)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

What the disappearance of Thomas Jefferson’s<\/a> daughter can tell us about racism in America.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many people know that Thomas Jefferson<\/a> had a long-standing relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings<\/a>. But fewer know that they had four children, three boys and a girl, who survived to adulthood. Born into slavery, Sally\u2019s daughter Harriet<\/a> boarded a stagecoach<\/a> to freedom at age 21, bound for Washington, D.C.<\/a> Her father had given her $50 for her travel expenses. She would never see her mother or younger brothers again.<\/p>\n

With her departure from Monticello<\/a> in 1822, Harriet disappeared from the historical record, not to be heard of again for more than 50 years, when her brother told her story. Seven-eighths white<\/a>, Harriet had \u201cthought it to her interest to go to Washington as a white woman,\u201d he said. She married a \u201cwhite man in good standing\u201d in that city and \u201craised a family of children.\u201d In the half-century during which she passed as white<\/a>, her brother was \u201cnot aware that her identity as Harriet Hemings of Monticello has ever been discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did we lose a president\u2019s daughter? Given America\u2019s obsession with the Founding Fathers<\/a>, with the children of the Revolution<\/a> and their descendants, why did Jefferson\u2019s child disappear? As it turns out, America has an even greater obsession with race, so that not even Harriet Hemings\u2019s lineage as a president\u2019s daughter was sufficient to convey the benefits of freedom. Instead, her birth into slavery marked her as black and drove her decision to erase her family history…<\/p>\n

Catherine Kerrison is an associate professor of history at Villanova University, and the author of the forthcoming book “Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black in a Young America<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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

What the disappearance of Thomas Jefferson’s daughter can tell us about racism in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,6462,6940,20,693,25],"tags":[27965,24007,918,2875,477,2581],"class_list":["post-55620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","category-women","tag-catherine-kerrison","tag-harriet-hemings","tag-sally-hemings","tag-the-washington-post","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55620","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=55620"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55623,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55620\/revisions\/55623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}