I personally refuse to hypostatize anything about Jefferson and Hemmings. I do
want to think hard about the relationship, since it is a part of our history and a
subject of contention on this list.
First, let us acknowledge that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings did have
a relationship. He claimed to own her. She lived with him in
Virginia, then in France, and then again for the rest of his life in
Virginia. He also owned all of her children. He apparently also had
an affective relationship with her because of her kinship to his late
wife: I believe that they were sisters.
It is, I believe this kinship, that distinguished Sally Hemmings
from the many other black women whom Jefferson also claimed to
own.
Second, "Papa says, Mama knows," was the rule until about
1980 when DNA technology reached a certain level of
sophistication. ALL claims to be descendants of Thomas
Jefferson, whether the claimant was white, black, or Native
American, were based on hearsay, not science. That the law
presumes the "legitimacy" of descent within the bounds of
matrimony, isn't proof of anything except that it was easier to bar
marriage to those considered undesirable as inheritors of the
wealth of the land, than it was to prove paternity.
(Moreover, an elite which tolerated first cousin marriages for two
centuries--some have argued that such unions were encouraged--
should be a geneticist/genealogist's nightmare. I am not sure, not
being a scientist, but I suspect the truth of the proposition proffered
above.)
I had many courses in methodology, but the use of billboards in
historical research totally shot by me. I am now thinking of that
great one that used to be on I-95 in Manchester, with one cow
standing on the back of another, scrawling on a wall "Eat More
Chicken!" Should I deduce anything about animal flesh
consumption in Virginia from this clever piece of evidence?
Probably not, heh?
Seriously, what are we debating here? Did Jefferson own
Hemmings and her children? Was Jefferson the kind of man to
allow anyone onto his estate to have sex with his slaves? Did he
encourage his male kin, the carriers of the Jefferson Y trait
especially to rogers his house servants?
How many reputations have to be smeared to protect the
posthumous reputation of our Third President?
Harold S. Forsythe
History & Black Studies
Fairfield University
Date sent: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:26:03 -0600
From: Judy Baugh <<[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Jefferson-Hemings-Woodson DNA Study
To: [log in to unmask]
Send reply to: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
<<[log in to unmask]>
Times New RomanWas anyone denying the obvious about those thousands of mulatto
children
born before emancipation? The fact that many white men had
sexual relations
with slave women does not prove that any one man did, however.
Neither that,
nor strong personal opinion, have any probative value in regard to
the paternity
of Sally Heming's children.
"Papa says, Mama knows" is an amusing little aphorism, but not
universally true.
If it was, one would never see billboards advertising 1-800-
WHOSDAD in letters
ten feet high. The only absolute proof is in the DNA. However,
western society
as reflected in its legal code has long afforded children born within
wedlock a strong
presumption of true paternity, while holding the claims of
unacknowledged, illegitimate
paternity to a higher standard of scrutiny and proof (one that's
increasingly transcendant
of the subjective and circumstantial thanks to developments in
genetic technology). Is
there some valid reason why the descendants of Patsy Jefferson,
Martha Jefferson,
and/or Sally Hemings should be considered exceptional to that?
It seems to me that the salient issue is what information from the
results of the DNA
study will be incorporated into the general and enduring public
awareness about our
third president. Will the well-obscured fact that he may *not*
have been the father
of any of Sally Hemings' children be a part of that? Or will we
firmly hypostatize a
relationship that may never have existed?
Rgds.,
Judy Baugh
Harold S. Forsythe wrote
leftCourier NewOne may doubt paternity in any case. As the old saying goes: "Papa says,
Mama knows." That the white Jeffersons would be so sure of their own paternal descent from the great founder, but so
doubtful about the often mocked paternity of self-described black descendants of Thomas Jefferson, has always seemed to me
about everything but actual descent.
As Joel Williamson so powerfully depicted in The Crucible of Race and New People, the increasing number of mulattoes in the
ante-bellum South was a subject often remarked upon. No one claimed that black men were responsible for this mixing, given
who they would have to have reproduced with to produce mulattoes. Now, in the antebellum South, elite white men had the
most ready access to enslaved women of African (and Native American) descent. They, after all, owned these women.
I really do not want to offend descent people, who have believed in the purity of an ancestor. I do not want to undermine the
moral consciousness of present day southerners. But what this debate constitutes, to my mind, is a denial of what slavery and a
slave- based society really was. It was a system where the wealthiest and most honored men and women in the society owned
the bodies and labor of another entire class of people. This implications of this ownership claim are staggering: involving
ownership of offspring, accumulated fruits of labor, and quite often of total sexual access. This latter was not a privilege
necessarily extended to the 3/4 of the white population who did not own slaves; as the southern folklore often implies. Sexual
access, like control over labor and ownership of children, was a privilege of slaveownership.
Face it!
Harold S. Forsythe
History & Black Studies
Fairfield University
Date sent: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 10:45:16 -0600
From: Judy Baugh
Subject: Re: Jefferson-Hemings-Woodson DNA Study
To: [log in to unmask]
Send reply to: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
I believe "fiasco" refers to the widespread conclusion, based on the findings of the initial Jefferson DNA
study (as reported in 'Nature', 1998), that TJ sired one or more of Sally Hemings' children.
Times New Roman
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