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The Successes of the Hemingses of Monticello
Kimbrilee Weber
[1] In Shannon Lanier and Jane Feldman's Jefferson's Children: The Story of One American Family, Jefferson descendant Lucian K. Truscott IV notes that "the denial of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings is deeply rooted in two hundred years of America's silence about slavery, as if by not talking about it we could wish it away. But three centuries of slavery have not gone away. They are part of a long, hard legacy we as a nation have failed to properly remember and account for. That we find ourselves at this late date confronting our tortured racial past in the person of Thomas Jefferson speaks volumes about how short has been the distance we've come since he wrote 'all men are created equal'" (7). Truscott's quote encapsulates the tension currently surrounding the Jefferson and Hemings descendants as they struggle to relate to one another. However, the Hemings descendants have remained steadfast in their commitment to maintaining the integrity of their oral traditions, and it is this staying power and determination that have allowed these descendants and Sally Hemings to become an integral part of American History. Like the family members, historians and Jefferson scholars like Annette Gordon-Reed have also worked to have this side of the story heard in the hopes that in the future we may, in the words of Truscott, "properly remember and account for" the Hemingses. Without this hunger and drive for integration into Jefferson's history, the Hemingses would not have become as visible as they are in the history and future of Thomas Jefferson. Although the Hemingses have not been welcomed by all of the Jefferson descendants, they have maintained vigor for their goal despite instances of setbacks and ignorance from the other side of the family, and they have welcomed newcomers into their circle with warmth and kindness that has been unmatched. No matter what the Monticello Association or any "white" Jefferson descendants may do to stand in their way, the Hemingses truly know the meaning of family and will continue to work to preserve it within their line.
Robert Cooley III stirs the pot
[2] When Robert Cooley III stood up at a major conference on Jeffersonian Legacies in Charlottesville in 1992, the Jefferson-Hemings descendants who had remained in the shadows of history began to gain momentum. Cooley's symbolic action sparked a variety of newspaper articles, and the controversy began percolating in the public mind. However, the major source of momentum for the Hemingses came in 1998 when Dr. Eugene Foster provided DNA results that reinforced the oral tradition the family had been telling for years. Eston Hemings, according to Dr. Foster's results, was found to have a link to a Jefferson male, which demonstrated the likelihood of the Hemings' oral tradition stating that Eston Hemings was a son of Jefferson and Sally. Despite this scientific reinforcement, the Hemingses still faced adversity from their family members. The most central part of this tension resided in the fact that many Jefferson descendants who self-identified as white did not want to acknowledge their family members on the Hemings side who self-identified as black. This racial tension forced a schism within the family that the Hemingses would have to overcome in order to fully become a part of the family.
[3] Fortunately, the Hemings family descendants have responded to this call with grace and persistence. Although the Monticello Association has voted "no" on allowing the Hemingses to become recognized family members, thus allowing them to be buried in Jefferson's graveyard at Monticello, they have not let this setback stop their desire to gather together and celebrate at Monticello. The family continues to hold regular meetings, and they celebrate the legacies of their slave ancestors during this meeting. The family's willingness to accept all family members is evident through the case of Daniel Hemmings [sic]. Hemmings was a racist southerner who experienced a role reversal as he attended a family reunion at Monticello in May of 1999, only to be met with scorn after he was a white man self-identifying as a Hemings descendant. His wife remembers that "there was a man in a wheelchair that day. When his wife introduced us as Hemingses, he just turned and wheeled away" (Lanier 69). Throughout the entire experience, Daniel Hemmings has remembered the way he has been treated by the Hemingses, who have never cared what his self-identified race is. To them, the fact that he is a Hemings makes him family, and this is enough. Mary and Daniel Hemmings argue that "[they] think that's what this story can do. That's the gift of it. It's a turning point in our history, in American history. The younger generation is looking for a way to heal this whole mess" (Lanier 70).
Historians' Support of the Hemingses
[4] In addition to family members providing support and acceptance, historians have amassed historical evidence and produced factual writings in order to substantiate the claims of the Hemingses lineage and to legitimize the family's oral tradition and gain them acceptance as official family members. This effort is what has continually provided fuel to the Hemings family's battle to be accepted by their family members and society, and the public successes of these attempts are what keep this story in the public eye. One of the leaders through this process has been Annette Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed has written Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), which has worked to factually deconstruct previous arguments about the relationship. Gordon-Reed notes in this text that "of course, at this time, whether Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had a sexual liaison is, not a legal, but a historical question. The principles that demand a consistent standard for assessing evidence should apply, nevertheless. That consistency has been utterly lacking in the scholarly writing on this question, and that is cause for concern. It is possible, by examining the reactions to this story, to see the ways in which black people have been treated as lumps of clay to be fashioned and molded into whatever image the given historian feels is necessary to make his point. This, in my view, is the real scandal of this whole story" (xxi).
[5] The scandal Gordon-Reed outlines is the exact problem she strives to avoid throughout her writing, providing an account of the historical nuances that she does not stretch or manipulate to fit her desired agenda. And, by the end of this text, Gordon-Reed displays facts that make it difficult to deny the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings. Her non-aggressive approach at legitimizing the Hemings' history provides the descendants with ammunition to combat future attacks on their credibility. Additionally, Gordon-Reed has recently released another book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2009), with a second part planned, which delves further into these issues of legitimacy. Her didactic, yet passionate tone should continue to provide the Hemingses and, more importantly, the skeptics and critics of the relationship, evidence that is becoming harder and harder to deny.
[6] In addition to Gordon-Reed, scholars like Mavis Brown have written articles and reviews on the subject of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship in support of the Hemings descendants and their quest for inclusion and acceptance. Brown notes that "if we can finally admit that the third President of the United States had two families, and that one of them was African American, then we can begin to demystify race" (72). Comments such as this open the floor to readers and put the pressure on the public in order to recognize the stakes in the issue and form their own opinions. In her review, Brown heralds Shannon Lanier's work for presenting both sides of such a controversial issue in a way that attempts to bridge the gap between the two sides of the family, and publicizing this work as Brown does is exactly what the public needs in order to make positive progress towards inclusion of the Hemingses into the Jefferson family.
What's at Stake for the Hemingses
[7] Other writers, like Lucian Truscott IV, have highlighted their personal stakes in the story and have provided undeniably powerful accounts of why this relationship and the acceptance of the Hemingses is so important on a larger level. Truscott echoes this sentiment best when he says that "I pray we will be fair to our cousins and to ourselves and to our history and to the memory not only of Thomas Jefferson but of Sally Hemings, and that we will do the right thing. Standing together, we are ancient evidence of the lie at the heart of racism, because in the words of Thomas Jefferson, we were created equal. We are Jefferson's children. We are a family." This quotation is key because it demonstrates why this validation is so important to the Hemingses and why they have been unrelenting in their pursuit of equality and acceptance. It is not about being famous. It is not about bragging rights. It is about finding legitimacy and richness in a history that all too recently has been denied and scoffed at. It is about asserting the power in oral tradition and the fact that a relationship, potentially a loving one, did exist between Jefferson and his African American slave, Sally Hemings. It is about uniting as one family and moving into the future as a united force, demystifying the racism which has made this impossible throughout history.
[8] I believe that the stakes for the Hemingses are incredibly high and that they have risen to this challenge with excellence. It would be very easy to take this sometimes hostile and tense situation and respond with anger and unproductive hate. However, this would be counterproductive to the mission of acceptance and inclusion upon which the family bases its efforts. This negative response would give the Jefferson side of the family more reason than ever to isolate and reject the Hemings descendants. Instead, the Hemingses and scholars who have spoken out in their support have given the public and the Jefferson descendants more reason than ever to stand behind them as one united force. The Hemings descendants are in search of an identity and a sense of family, and the positive strides that they have made in the last thirty years indicate that this family is here to stay.
[9] It seems appropriate to close with the words of Shelby Steele, who argues that "If Jefferson's descendants are unconvincing just yet as family, they are nevertheless struggling with their relatedness to each other. But their racial identities attach them to so much history, give them territories to defend, grudges to settle, guilts to redeem. And there is no way to resolve all the history between them. To be a family Jefferson's descendants will simply have to want family more than race. Out of this wanting they can make new history" (Jefferson's Blood). The Hemingses have put their grudges aside and are moving towards a future that is filled with inclusion and acknowledgment of their rightful place in history.
