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An American Love Story: An Overview
Listen to "A Politically Conscious Cinderella" (17 minutes):
February 13, 2000, is almost as important a date in the Jefferson-Hemings controversy as November 1, 1998. For on that date 20 million television viewers of the first part of the two-part miniseries Sally Hemings: An American Scandal really went through the looking glass. And we mean, really. It is in the nature of film to compel belief more readily and more globally than print. And at 47:53 minutes into the film the Mulberry Row mid-wife lifts Sally's "white as snow" baby over her head like some sacred oblation and loudly proclaims, for all the world to hear, "Thomas Jefferson . . . Hemings." It's a stunning visual. Thus was the reality of the Jefferson-Hemings liaison secured by the DNA thrust literally naked into American living rooms, consciousness, and conscience. Say hello, America, to the baby-version of James Thomson Callender's "President Tom," where this marathon of a miniseries began fourteen episodes ago.
Sally Hemings: An American Scandal is the work of Tina Andrews, an African American with her own experience of racism (more on that below), who remembers a "rage from which I would never recover" after reading Jefferson's "incendiary" Notes on the State of Virginia, a rage that determined Andrews to make Sally "the voice for all of the slaves" and "the voice of the silenced." Not that she would carry an ax with her activist agenda, or so Andrews claimed, for she believed that the Jefferson-Hemings relationship was a loving one. "Why would these two have continued together for 38 years, particularly under some politically untenable circumstances for Jefferson," she asks, "unless there were some emotional attachment involved?" Andrews believed that "despite their vast cultural differences, despite the adversity they faced and the secrecy they were forced to maintain," Jefferson and Hemings "remained devoted to each other." In centering Sally, furthermore, Andrews claimed not to "debase" Jefferson "but rather to place him in some mortal context." Her lily-white hope is that "the movie will further the dialogue between the races, that the sons and daughters of slaves and the sons and daughters of slave owners will come together and talk honestly about the past -- accept it, learn from it and grow closer together."
"Mortal context" is a telling phrase. Scrambling historians and commentators in our previous episode talked of de-mythologizing Jefferson as one of the consequences of the DNA results. That is certainly true here. In this film we "see" a sleep-walking Jefferson captured by Sally's siren-like spell one night, as well as, the very next morning, a sexually super-charged Jefferson preparing to "roger" her (as bawdy fellow-Virginian William Byrd, might say) on the breakfast table. Later, here's a cerebral Jefferson uncharacteristically confused -- muddled, in fact -- at the "wrestling" between his head and heart over love for a slave, or, as he delicately puts it, a young and vulnerable woman "in my service." Here's Jefferson the proud but unacknowledged father tenderly stroking his new-born mulatto babe and softly kissing his "own sweet Sally" on a solitary night visit to the barren slave quarters, in one of the most visually arresting scenes in the film. Here's a madly jealous Jefferson driven to the first precincts of violence by the thought of Sally sexually with another man, especially a black man: "I will not have another man touch you. You understand . . . You belong to me." Here's an aging Jefferson anxious about losing the still nubile Sally to the sexual prowess of a "younger man"; a humbled man repenting the youthful ignorance of his Notes on the State of Virginia; and a desperate man, on his knees, finally forced to admit "I love you" when he feels Sally slipping away. Here's a guilty Jefferson -- in one of Andrews' explicit anachronisms -- suffering the stunned gaze of his slave family as he announces the failure of Monticello and their sale. And, finally, here's a frail, doddering, pathetic Jefferson, stripped of his possessions, sitting in empty rooms echoing his near-hysteria, preparing for death, and then dying, with only Sally for his support.
Sally may be Jefferson's support, but she plays no supporting role. Sally is the center of the show. Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Jefferson receives nary a throwaway line. Maria Cosway is reduced to cameo. Sally's beauty renders Founding Fathers Jefferson and Paine breathless. Moreover, she not only reads but understands Paine's Common Sense, and not only understands it but performs it. She teaches slaves to read and write, abets their escape. She entices Jefferson to their first sexual encounter, embarrasses him at a White House dinner, taunts him about keeping sexual company with "my own kind," and maneuvers him into empowering her domination over his daughter, the frustrated and snarky Martha Jefferson Randolph. Sally not only questions Jefferson about Notes on the State of Virginia but the Declaration of Independence as well. Her most dramatic repeated rhetorical move is what we might call the "J'accuse." For instance, her "Better than you can?" effectively indicts Jefferson's slithery punt to Paine to answer her questions on human equality, the promise of which he literally gave birth. She further indicts his hypocrisy regarding race legislation by saying, compellingly, "you cannot come to my bed and go to your white Congress and do nothing about this plague on my people." Sally's plaintive "I have given you four children, Thomas, and yet I am not the one sitting next to you at dinner . . . I want to be at your side" indicts Jefferson's husbandly neglect. And, most powerfully, most explosively, and most successfully, in her climactic shredding of Notes, she indicts Jefferson's core humanity when she parries his disgust at "amalgamation" with "Are our children a degradation? Is my mother? Am I?"
So, in establishing a mortal context for Jefferson, Andrews' Sally, "the voice of the silenced," gives Jefferson a drubbing if not a debasement. And yet she loves. And yet she loves. "I hate you," Sally screams after the brutal revelations of Jefferson's Notes, "I hate what I've allowed you to turn me into," and yet, moments later, she answers his request for a promise to stay with him with a simple "I do," eerily reminiscent of a marriage vow. With a glance of tender admiration at the way Jefferson handled the return of their son Tom come to take his Momma away from Monticello, a now aging Sally, brim-full of contentment and satisfaction, firmly declares, "This is my home, Tom." And on his deathbed, Sally comforts Jefferson's last moments with a simple, heartfelt "You are my own sweet Tom," alluding to yet reversing Jefferson's rhetorically evasive "You are my own sweet Sally" earlier in the film. That heartfelt phrase, however, is not Jefferson's epitaph, for in the coda of the film we learn, in what is perhaps the biggest "invention" by Andrews, that Jefferson freed Sally in Paris years ago and that she has stayed with him voluntarily all those years since. Firmly asserting a family connection with Martha, Sally reveals "I've been free since Paris. Your father once told me something that you said that slavery is wrong, that human beings should have the right to be where they want to. I've always wanted to be here, Martha. If I took my freedom it would have meant I would have to leave Virginia, but I would never, I would never have left your father."
Andrews traveled a difficult road to bring this revolutionary Sally to life. The path began with her personal history and the racism she faced in her career. In the late 1970s she starred in the long-running television soap-opera Days of Our Lives, and her character engaged in the first interracial kiss on daytime television. When the negative responses came flooding in, however, Andrews' character was written out while the white male maintained his spot in the cast, and she had difficulty working as an actress after that. Frustrated with the blatant racism, Andrews turned to her father for love and support. Her father replied to her situation with a challenge rather than sympathy. He said, "You can change things. You can use your talents to write better roles for African American actresses. As far as interracial relationships go, you should think about doing one of the greatest interracial love stories in American history." Heeding her father's words, Andrews began researching Hemings's relationship with Jefferson. Her biggest pieces of evidence stemmed from the interviews she conducted with Hemings descendants. While most of them had never met one another, they all gave similar testimony. The oral history they shared became the story's foundation, and the descendants remained active in aiding Andrews throughout the production of the film.
After completing a screenplay, Andrews' first shot at telling Sally's story came from a theatrical production. The Mistress of Monticello (1985) premiered in Andrews' hometown of Chicago, and the audience gave it a standing ovation. Many spectators were surprised they had never heard of Sally or the relationship, thus strengthening Andrews' desire to broadcast her screenplay on television. While television executives thought the writing was solid and the storyline was intriguing, they all had similar complaints: there was no substantial evidence to validate that the relationship occurred. Good timing, however, altered the screenplay's fate. When the DNA results were released in 1998, Andrews' work received the credit that enabled it to be broadcast. CBS bought the rights, and the production of Sally Hemings: An American Scandal ensued.
Many of the scenes in the film stayed true to Andrews' original screenplay, but producers eventually decided to change certain parts. For instance, Andrews attempted to but could not dissuade them from modifying the scene that commences the physical romance between Hemings and Jefferson. In Andrews' original version, Jefferson initiates the sexual relationship, while Sally does so in the film. As Jefferson peeks into Sally's room one night, he watches her reading a book in her nightgown. As he enters, he appears confused and uncertain. Sally, however, lowers her dress, exposing her shoulders. She takes the lead, not only that night, but the next morning as well. When Jefferson attempts to apologize for their sexual intercourse, she kisses his lips, cutting off his words. Andrews' frustration with such changes stemmed from fear of reinforcing a negative stereotype. She believed that black females were already seen as promiscuous, and Sally instigating the sex only strengthens that belief. One of Andrews' major goals in the creation of the film was to create a strong, black female character that America could see as a role model. Sally's positive traits force Jefferson's attention, and he therefore should be the person to initiate the relationship.
Andrews also did not approve of the title Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, which was chosen for marketing purposes. Time and the public's reaction, however, have given Andrews her wish. The movie is now (2011) being sold under the name Sally Hemings: An American Love Story. The controversy can now be framed as a loving relationship rather than a scandalous affair or rape. Sally has gained so much recognition, in fact, that subsequent agents in the evolving history of this controversy are able to take her for granted. In The Hemingses of Monticello (2008), for instance, as we will see in the next episode, Annette Gordon-Reed starts moving beyond Sally to investigate her entire family, eerily echoing Sally's claim in the film that "The Hemings are as much a part of Monticello as the Jeffersons."
