Monticello Visitors Shocked After Discovering Tour of Jefferson's Home Has a Woke New Spin

westernjournal ^ | July 10, 2022 | Andrew Jose

[MarvinStinson]

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation has drawn criticism for transforming Thomas Jefferson’s Charlottesville, Virginia, home into an exhibit on slavery.

The foundation manages Monticello — the primary plantation and residence of the founding father and third president of the United States.

Monticello was once a tribute to a man who helped draft the Declaration of Independence — the founding document of the U.S.

Now, the plantation’s management has transformed it into a site that emphasizes the fact that Jefferson enslaved people. Monticello “offers visitors a harangue on the horrors of slavery.”

According to Monticello’s website, one of the ticketed tours on schedule for the plantation is the “Slavery at Monticello Tour.”

This tour highlights the “experiences of the enslaved people who lived and labored on the Monticello plantation,” the website stated.

Monticello also offers a free mobile guide app on slavery at the plantation. Monticello’s website has an entire section dedicated to slamming the founding father for slavery.

“Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘all men are created equal,’ and yet enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life,” the section stated.

Although the section conceded Jefferson “made some legislative attempts against slavery and at times bemoaned its existence, Jefferson also profited directly from the institution of slavery.”

Monticello’s slamming of Jefferson also extended to how history was framed at the physical site, with boards at the various locations on the plantation trying to connect a part of Jefferson’s life with slavery.

[MarvinStinson]

“Interpretive signage throughout the estate places slavery at the forefront of each historical feature by adding the word ‘enslaved’ before every possible job description, often multiple times: ‘an enslaved cook,’ ‘enslaved postilions,’ ‘Jefferson’s enslaved valet, Burwell Colbert.’”

[HighSierra5]

Hang these Aholes out back.

[MarvinStinson]

According to the New York Post, one of the first paintings visitors to Monticello would see when they enter the home is a work depicting Jefferson’s slaves weeping.

One sign at the site questions the meaning of the Declaration of Independence.

“Is ‘all men created equal’ being lived up to in our country today? When will we know when it is,” it stated.

[MarvinStinson]

“The whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation,” Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker said. “People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.”

In a Facebook comment, one visitor to Monticello wrote that he did not enjoy his visit because “the tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man.”

“Always enjoyed visiting Monticello in the past. The workers are super friendly and helpful,” another visitor named William Bailes wrote in a review of the tour.

“Unfortunately, on this guided tour, we were lectured more on slaves and Sally Hemmings than the man himself. Half of the comments on Jefferson were critical,” Bailes wrote, adding, “Even my 11-year-old daughter noticed the bias.”

“Our goal is to present an honest, inclusive history of Monticello in all its aspects as well as Jefferson’s contributions to the founding of the country,” Monticello spokeswoman Jenn Lyon said, according to the Post.

[Paal Gulli]

JAMBOG

Monticello Visitors Shocked After Discovering Tour of Jefferson’s Home Has a Woke New Spin

07/11/2022 11:14:58 AM PDT · by bitt · 41 replies

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4077662/posts

[Allegra]

Eww. Everything *they* touch gets ruined.

I’m glad I visited Monticello when I was a teenager.

[dforest]

No use visiting there anymore.

[Leaning Right]

Martin Luther King thought homosexuality was a mental disorder. And he advised homosexuals to see a psychiatrist. Perhaps all sites dedicated to MLK should emphasize that fact, and ignore any good that he might have done.

[Honorary Serb]

Not only did Thomas Jefferson play the leading role in writing the Declaration of Independence, but as President he also GREATLY expanded the size of the USA via the Louisiana Purchase!!!! Then he sent Lewis and Clark to explore the territory—and beyond!!!!

Jefferson also played a leading role in drafting the Northwest Ordinance, which created a template for the creation of new States north of the Ohio River, in which slavery was prohibited!!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance

Jefferson was a complex man, and our greatest intellectual President! Turning Monticello into a woke exhibition about slavery does him—and ALL Americans—a grave injustice!!!!

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

In the present day, blacks have more rights than whites.

[laweeks]

A most impressive founding father who doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment. There’s no indication that he ever mistreated his slaves. There’s no way he could’ve freed them considering there was no place they could’ve gone and not be mistreated. Would be great if this sh$t could stop.

[cyclotic]

That’s so disgusting. We toured Monticello about 3 years ago. Our tour guide was excellent. He talked about Sally Hemings as a trusted and important member of his staff. Our tour guide was a very well read historian and he was even a black man. I went in thinking this would be a Jefferson is scum tour. Instead it was a great day.

[AbolishCSEU]

Agreed. We visited under the Obama regime when all this hate whitey spin started. Pathetic. But they’ll admit the eeeeevvvvviiiiillll Thomas Jefferson gave his “enslaved” kitchen help an all expense paid trip to Paris to learn the culinary arts. And they came back from Europe with fine bone china in their possession.

[Cheesehead in Texas]

This is not new. 15 years ago I described the tour at Monticello as “all slavery, all the time”. When the docent asked if anyone had any questions, I asked, “Were you ever going to bother to mention that Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence?”

[combat_boots]

Bravo

[combat_boots]

https://interestingengineering.com/7-things-you-wont-believe-thomas-jefferson-invented

[XRdsRev]

Someday in the 23rd century when dogs rule the world, the woke people of today will be condemned for having pets. Judging the people of the eighteenth century by twenty first century social standards and lifestyle is condescending and foolish.

[MarvinStinson]

Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs Talks Thomas Jefferson's Troubling Legacy

Daveed Diggs, who plays Thomas Jefferson in the rap opera Hamilton, describes Jefferson as “ really pretty sh—ty.”

BY ASHLEY ROSS APRIL 13, 2016
https://time.com/4287773/hamilton-daveed-diggs-jefferson/

When Daveed Diggs walks down the street in New York City these days, he often gets recognized as someone very particular: Thomas Jefferson. The actor and rap artist plays the founding father—as well as the Marquis de Lafayette—in Broadway’s record-shattering Hamilton, eight times a week. As a result, he says, fans often think of him as if he were Jefferson’s modern-day persona.

“I think people understand I’m not actually the real Thomas Jefferson,” he tells TIME, with a laugh, but Jefferson is still a complicated person with whom to be associated. Diggs grew up in California, son of a white, Jewish mother and an African-American father.

Meanwhile, Jefferson was a Virginian elite who was one of the most important men in the shaping of the United States but who also owned slaves—who, most historians now agree, included some of his own children. (The song “What’d I Miss” contains a brief reference to this history: the “Sally” whom Jefferson asks to open a letter for him would have been Sally Hemings.)

“It’s tricky with Jefferson because there are so many things about him that I disagree with,” Diggs says. “I think if you embrace all of his contradictions, you can end up with a lot of things about him that are great—but you still have to remember that he was a slave owner.”

Doing justice to both sides of Jefferson’s legacy, while also creating a contemporary character out of one of the most famous men in American history, was just one of the reasons why it was helpful to have historian Ron Chernow—whose biography of Alexander Hamilton is the show’s source material—on stand-by. “We had Ron in the room most of the time, which was incredible,” Diggs says. “We’d be like, ‘So, if I do this thing with the character does that ruin history or is it, like, a fair adaptation?’”

But director Thomas Kail also told the cast, Diggs says, not to make their character interpretations into a book report. “We were to use what was useful in terms of telling this version of the story,” he says, “and the way that we made [Jefferson] function in the show is to make him incredibly charismatic.”

Diggs’ version of Jefferson is more than just charismatic—he’s flamboyant and funny and, as TIME’s review put it “a scheming dandy.”

“History is about who tells it, and I feel like I’ve been given this opportunity to like, re-imagine and retell the story,” Diggs says. It’s not lost on him that he’s making the audience fall in love with a guy who, in his words, “is really pretty sh—ty.”

Still, he says, the end result is worth it if it inspires viewers to think twice about what they learned in school: “I think it’s cool that the association of all of us in this particular production with these characters gives audiences a reason to learn more about them.”

[Olog-hai]

“History is about who tells it, and I feel like I’ve been given this opportunity to like, re-imagine and retell the story,” Diggs says …

IOW, lie.