Happy Independence Day

How to portray a woman who did not leave a photograph or a portrait behind her? Her shadow on the wall testifies to both her presence and her absence from much of the historical record.

It’s the Fifth of July (okay, posting a day late), so it’s appropriate to take a moment to be glad–perhaps “satisfied” is a better word–that Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s planation, has opened a new exhibit to explore and explain the life of Sally Hemings.

What should we call Sally Hemings? Jefferson’s slave? His mistress? His victim? His common-law-wife? His sister-in-law? Mother of his enslaved children?

Or how about simply a woman who had independence in her grasp but gave it up, only to work hard and negotiate skillfully to achieve independence for her children.

Sally Hemings features in my adaptation of Jon Meacham’s biography of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher.

In his farm book, Jefferson recorded the fate of his crops and the details of the lives of his slaves. He coolly noted down the births of his own children with Sally Hemings. These children did not receive the tender care that Patsy’s and Polly’s boys and girls knew from their grandfather. Jefferson was apparently able to think of them as something entirely separate from his cherished life with his white family. “He was not in the habit of showing…fatherly affection to us as children,” said Jefferson’s son Madison Hemings.

She also gets a mention in Secrets of the Seven: The Eagle’s Quill.