Honor for Sally Hemings

At long, overdue last, Sally Hemings is to be accorded the respect she deserves at Monticello.

Sally Hemings takes center stage in Monticello on Saturday when the Thomas Jefferson Foundation opens an exhibit in a space where she is said to have lived for some time. Her story is told through the recollections of her son Madison Hemings, the third of four children she and Thomas Jefferson had who lived to adulthood. His memoir, published in an Ohio newspaper in 1873, gives vital information about the Hemings family genealogy, his mother’s life and the course of his own history.

I discussed this exhibit when it was announced, here.

Even after blithe hand-waving about Jefferson being a man of his time, when misuse of slaves for sex was relatively common if little-discussed, it isn’t believable that the author of the Declaration of Independence didn’t recognize the hypocrisy and squalor of it. Though it isn’t possible to know what was in either Hemings’ or Jefferson’s head, it isn’t crazy to contemplate the irony that Hemings may have counted herself lucky for capturing the Master’s eye, and that Jefferson despised himself for it.

Life is messy, and history more so. In this age when so many Americans know so little about their own country, it’s good that this particular mess has been cleaned-up.

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