Today we are talking about the birthday Thomas Jefferson (b. April 13, 1743, in Shadwell), who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was the first secretary of state, second vice president, and the third president of the United States. Inseparable from this story is that he enslaved and raped African Americans, foremost among them and from a young age Sarah “Sally” Hemings. As historian Annette Gordon-Reed makes clear, “We can discover slavery’s ultimate meaning for Jefferson only by examining intensely the nature of his relations with the people whom he enslaved and by considering what those relationships meant in his day-to-day life.” A fundamental question raised by these histories is this: What role did Sally Hemings and the rest of the Hemings family also enslaved by Jefferson played in the building of the United States? Madison Hemings, the son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, later reflected on his experiences in a Pennsylvania newspaper. He stressed the lived experiences of him and his three siblings, all of whom were born from Jefferson’s rape of Sally Hemings. He stated: “We all married and have raised families.”
Recommended reading to learn more:
Citations: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), 628, 636; Madison Hemings, “Recollections of Madison Hemings,” as published in the Pike County Republican, March 13, 1873, https://www.monticello.org/slavery/slave-memoirs-oral-histories/recollections-of-madison-hemings/; “Monticello, home of Jefferson, Virginia,” stereograph (Charlottesville, VA, c. 1909), https://www.loc.gov/item/2018663821/.
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