Posted on 07/14/2003 10:33:43 AM PDT by presidio9
When they were young, their parents told them they were related to a famous man, a slave owner who became president. They called it a family secret, since outsiders would never believe that black children could be descendants of a president.
But some did talk about that distant ancestor, Thomas Jefferson, and were laughed at or called liars by friends and even teachers. No one is calling them liars anymore.
Nearly five years after DNA testing provided compelling — some argue overwhelming — evidence that Jefferson fathered at least one child with a young slave named Sally Hemings, about 150 of her family's descendants gathered this weekend for their first reunion on the grounds of Jefferson's hilltop plantation, Monticello.
They came in a rainbow of shades: some dark-skinned, some light brown, some as white as a Mayflower descendant. But they behaved as one would expect long-lost cousins to behave, hugging and kissing and sharing stories about children, jobs, golf and family trees.
Just after daybreak this morning, they gathered under a pale blue sky before what is believed to be one of Monticello's slave graveyards to pay tribute to their clan's matriarchs, Sally and her mother, Elizabeth Hemings.
"They were pieces of an American puzzle who didn't quite fit in," said the Rev. Timothy Hughes, a descendant of one of Elizabeth Hemings's daughters, Betty.
Then they moved to a hallowed spot that, before today, had been closed to most of them: the Jefferson family cemetery. They posed for photos, laid flowers on tombstones and gently touched the simple stone obelisk above the third president's grave.
"This today, while not a revolution, is a great reconciliation," said Gregory Cooley, a Virginia lawyer descended from Thomas C. Woodson, who is thought by many to be Sally's first son.
But beneath the uplifting veneer of this weekend's reunion lies an increasingly rancorous battle between the Hemings clan and some of Jefferson's descendants over who can claim the Jefferson birthright. At its heart, the fight is a metaphor for Americans' deeply conflicted views on race, family and Jefferson himself.
On one side, many of the Hemingses have argued for an all-inclusive definition of family that would encompass the offspring of all seven of Sally's children. Some have argued that the group should be expanded to include all the descendants of Elizabeth Hemings as well.
The DNA test concluded that there was strong evidence that a Jefferson male, probably Thomas himself, fathered one of Sally's sons, Eston. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit organization that runs Monticello, issued a report in 2000 saying that the DNA results, combined with other historical evidence, indicated "a high probability" that Jefferson fathered Eston, and possibly five of Sally's other children.
That conclusion has been endorsed by the National Genealogical Society and a number of prominent Jefferson scholars, many of whom had rejected the Hemingses' claim before.
"Prior to the DNA, I'd say the case against Jefferson didn't reach beyond reasonable doubt," said the historian Joseph J. Ellis, the author of a Jefferson biography, "American Sphinx." "Jefferson is now regarded by most serious scholars as having clearly had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings."
But the Monticello Association, which operates the Jefferson cemetery and represents descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha, has not accepted the DNA findings as conclusive. And the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, which includes some of Jefferson's descendants, commissioned its own panel, which concluded in 2001 that Jefferson's younger brother, Randolph, was more likely to have been the father of Sally's children.
"The reason we don't think Jefferson did this is that his reputation meant everything to him, and he would not have risked it on a young slave woman," said Nathaniel Abeles, president of the Monticello Association. "He had everything to lose and nothing to gain, especially when there were plenty of other available women at that time."
The fight between the groups has at times taken on the orchestrated nastiness of a political campaign.
Led by Mr. Abeles, the association set a limit on guests to this year's association meeting in Monticello, held in May, after he learned that Hemings family members were conspiring with sympathetic association members to send a large contingent.
The Hemings group later discovered that Mr. Abeles's wife, Paulie, had monitored their plotting by joining their Yahoo e-mail group, posing as a 67-year-old black woman named Cassandra Lewis. Mrs. Abeles has admitted to the ruse, claiming she was monitoring the Hemings group's efforts to infiltrate and perhaps disrupt the association's meeting.
"We found out about a lot of things that people were trying to do to get around rules for our meetings," Mr. Abeles said in a telephone interview.
The dispute has clearly created bitter divisions within the once sleepy association. During today's service at Monticello's slave graveyard, Susan Hutchison, a descendant of Martha Randolph, Jefferson's daughter, read a statement apologizing to the Hemings family for the association's exclusive policies and expressing "deep regret" that Jefferson owned slaves.
"Our lives have been enriched by our relationship with you," she said.
Many people at the reunion said they were not interested in joining the Monticello Association. All they want, they said, is recognition that Jefferson was the father of at least one line of Hemings offspring.
"I think he's lucky to have been related to us," Patti Jo Harding, 51, a descendant of Sally's son Madison, said of Jefferson. "To see what Sally did, she must have been a great woman."
Madison Hemings and his siblings were so light-skinned that they were able to blend into white communities. Many of their descendants did the same, leaving their slave ancestry behind.
Julia Westerinen of Staten Island, who organized the reunion, said she had thought for years that she was related to Jefferson's white uncle — until scholars discovered that she was a descendant of Eston Hemings. She now identifies herself as black on census forms.
Her cousin Mary Jefferson contends that her mother, a working-class Italian, would not have married her father, the scion of a prominent Chicago family, had she known he was descended from slaves. Ms. Jefferson said that if her father knew he was related to Eston Hemings, he kept it a secret.
"When the DNA results came out, I was moved to tears," she said. "It's not that I was now a Jefferson. It was that I knew who my family was."
Some reunion guests said they are still trying to uncover their heritage. Thomas D. Best, a retired college professor from California, said he was convinced he was descended from Sally Hemings's daughter Harriet. He has been combing through genealogical records for years to find proof. "I don't get a lot of support from my family," he said. "My 95-year-old aunt told me, `You were born white, and you're going to stay white.' "
Asked if Jefferson's place in history had been tarnished by his affair with Sally Hemings, most guests here said no. It only showed, they said, how complex and often contradictory he was.
"I'm just happy to have learned that he had some companionship," said Marla Stevens, 51, a descendant of Martha Randolph. "It means he was a whole human being. He was loved and had the capacity to love."
As fireflies rose from Monticello's great flower-ringed lawn on Saturday night, the reunion guests gathered for a family photo. At Ms. Westerinen's prompting, some began singing, "We are family."
"Like all families, there's a few you'd like to throw away," said Cauline Yates, 49, a descendant of Elizabeth Hemings. "But if this turned out to be a big joke, I'd still have made a lot of new friends."
FYI, please keep me on your ping list.
A Family Get-Together of Historic Proportions (Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings?)
Such a parenthetical change wouldn't affect FR's title search. What do you think?
Reparations?
...thanking you.
Darn! Why do you have to keep injecting reality into all of this?
That's why anyone who says Thomas Jefferson slept with Sally Hemings is speaking on the basis of something other than science.
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