The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been a subject of speculation for centuries and even more so in the past decade, when DNA testing increased evidence of a sexual liaison. Author Annette Gordon-Reed, who received attention in 1997 for a book that carefully evaluated claims and counter-claims about the Jefferson-Hemings relationship, has written a new book about Sally Hemings - a slave in the Founding Father's household - and her family. Gordon-Reed's book chronicles the Hemings family from the mid-1700s, when an English sea captain fathered a child by an enslaved woman living near Williamsburg, Va., to the early 19th-century story of Sally Hemings.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• jefferson
• monticello
• hemings
• gordon-reed
• kluge
• scholars
• virginia