The Jefferson - Hemings ControversyHistory on trial Main Page

AboutTime LineEpisodesJefferson on Race & SlaveryResources
Episodes
>
>

Gordon-Reed, Annette. "Video Report: Love or Rape?" Jefferson's Blood. PBS Frontline, 2000.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/video/report2.html
Brief interview. Love doesn't matter that much to Gordon-Reed, for that still wouldn't change her view of Jefferson's responsibility as a slave master, but she doesn't understand why people are reluctant to believe that love was part of such a long-standing relationship.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.
A blistering examination by a lawyer and an African American of the scholarship on the controversy: "The treatment of the story well into modern times is evidence of the continuing grip that the doctrine of white supremacy has on American society. The historiography displays carelessness with the lives of enslaved men and women, disrespect for the sensibilities of their descendants, and a concomitant willingness to safeguard the interests of those who held blacks in bondage -- sometimes at the cost of all reason. The picture that emerged from this, for me, revealed the ways in which our distorted racial values, set down in the time of slavery, promote and protect error, irrationality, and unfairness. As if we had fallen through the looking glass, the chief purveyors of the distortion presented themselves, and we accepted, as models of accuracy, rationality, and fairness." Gordon-Reed published a new edition a year later, after the DNA results appeared (see episode 13).
Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. "Booknotes," January 6, 1999.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/119003-1
60-minute interview about the book by Brian Lamb on the C-Span show.