The Jefferson - Hemings ControversyHistory on trial Main Page

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Bid 'em in, Bid 'em in!! Behold the auction block where "two daughters of Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the presidents of the great republic, were disposed of to the highest bidder!" Talk about deadbeat dads. From a suicide in our nation's capital, to a tragic paraplegic in New York, to a shouting Methodist in Liberia, Jefferson’s ghosts -- his mixed-race children -- haunt the landscape. Abolitionists and the African American oral tradition in the early 19th century map the Monticellian diaspora.