The Hemingses of Monticello : An American Family

In The Hemingses of Monticello : An American Family, the long-awaited sequel to Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), Annette Gordon-Reed delivers a powerful composite portrait of the African American family whose labors helped make Jefferson's Virginia residence a fountainhead of American culture. Primary interest naturally attaches to Sally Hemings, the gifted black woman who chose - at age 16 - to live as Jefferson's enslaved mistress in America rather than as a free woman in France. But Gordon-Reed highlights the family role of Sally's mother, Elizabeth Hemings, whose experience in bearing children to both black and white fathers schooled her in the racial dynamics of early America. Biracial relationships immensely complicated life at Monticello, where the Virginia planter famous for declaring the equality of all men counted among his slaves four of his own children, fathered in a union he never publicly acknowledged. Gordon-Reed teases out telling clues from correspondence and journals of the Hemingses' struggle for dignity despite the cruel constraints of slavery. That Jefferson finally freed his children by Sally does not obscure those restraints, nor does it hide the tragedy visited upon other Monticello slaves when Jefferson's posthumous debts licensed the auctioneer to break up black families to increase their market value.
-Booklist Reviews

2008 National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction
2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner, History