 Well good morning everyone. My name is Rex Ellis. I am the associate director for Curatorial Affairs at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. That's just a long title that says I do whatever they tell me to do. What we've tried to do with this exhibition is to suggest three things. Number one we've tried to grapple with the whole idea of slavery especially in the era of the American Revolution and the paradox of liberty. Those who are asking for liberty actually being those who are also slave owners. That's the paradox that we examine and try to talk about. Second thing we wanted to do was to talk about Jefferson and his life. A little bit about Albemarle, a little bit about his parents, and a little bit about Jefferson the man and how the sort of paradox that he is as well. Not only his public life but his private life as well. There's a third section that helps us focus on the enslaved population at Monticello. That enslaved population reached at some point throughout his lifetime over 600 people. And so we feel that it's difficult to understand Jefferson without understanding his enslaved population. And so you will be introduced to six families within that larger population. And then finally there is a section that we are calling for lack of a better term getting word because that is the name of the project that in 1993 two historians at Monticello embarked on to try to find descendants of the enslaved at Monticello. And that section talks about those descendants and where they are and the kinds of things that they're doing. What you see on the outside here are two visions that in some way suggest this whole paradox that we're talking about. Here is Thomas Jefferson and he's behind the Declaration of Independence. And here is Isaac Jefferson. He was a granger but he changed his name once he was free to Jefferson. And he is behind a farm book that Jefferson kept from 1770 all the way up until the beginning of the 19th century. That book was supposed to be a sort of diary of his farm and it has turned into one of the most important sources that give us some sense of who the enslaved were and what they did because there as you see here there are families that he mentions within the farm book. So with that information we know approximately when they were born we know what their names were and we can in some way put them in the historical record in ways that we could not if we did not have this information. I also will tell you that I don't believe Monticello is typical of the slave experience in the colonial Chesapeake. I think it's very atypical and as you go through it I think you will see it. There are sort of parallels to the larger slave system but Mr. Jefferson in a variety of ways was a unique man. He was a scholar. He was an author. He was an inventor. He was a farmer. He tell you he was a farmer. Other folk would tell you no no no he wasn't too good a farmer but in a variety of ways he was a very he was a that sort of quintessential enlightenment man who was much more of a Renaissance figure than he was sort of ensconced in the colonial period as many were. They looked to him and what he said to determine what they should be thinking in many ways so as you go through keep that in mind as well. This first area focuses on Jefferson and the idea that in order to see Jefferson clearly you must see him through the lens of his enslaved population. You will see a statue of Jefferson and then behind him you will see a series of names. There are names of over 600 enslaved that we know lived and worked at and in and around Monticello and the idea here again is it allows us to see Jefferson more clearly. You will also see here Jefferson's lap desk which was what he drafted the Declaration of Independence on so in many ways that that lap desk and the the statue of Jefferson and what you see around of the information you see around it gives you some sense of Jefferson's prominence not only in the colonial period but also his prominence as as a slave owner. I wanted to do since we didn't get a chance yesterday to do a little debrief on on the museum and what was you know what was particularly useful about it what changed the way that you thought about the past what changed the way you think about teaching this this chapter to your kids. Do you remember what the the sort of framing is? It's the Declaration of Independence on the right. Yeah and right I mean it's and just that those two images you know you have to pick one or two things that go on the outside and then the title Paradox of Liberty. I mean this is all really carefully you know selected to get you thinking some new way about this person. Think about how if you just want to think about context and you want to think about content and this is a source. Think about how different the experience you have of Thomas Jefferson is if you spend 22 minutes in the Paradox of Liberty exhibit at the Smithsonian versus 22 minutes at the Jefferson Memorial which is not very far away. How do you summarize a life if you've got you can use 61 images you can have a total of 1200 words and the average visitor is going to spend 18 to 22 minutes walking through there. I mean what do you what parts of the story do you tell and what do you leave out and I when I approach it that way I thought gosh this is an impossible task that they have carried off really well.