Evidence
The best detailed introduction to the history of the dispute
over the parentage of Sally Hemings’s children is
Annette Gordon-Reed’s book, Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1997). Two good online
sources for a discussion of the recent DNA findings
on the genetic heritage of the Hemingses are this one
on the University of Virginia website:
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/tomsally.html
and this one hosted by Monticello, Jefferson’s
home. Interesting comparisons can be drawn between this
“official” statement by the curators of
Jefferson’s heritage and Dr. Gordon-Reed’s
discussion and the University of Virginia piece:
http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html
For evaluating oral history evidence, the Library of
Congress provides a very useful teachers’ guide
based on the archive of interviews compiled in the Depression
by the WPA. As the interviews include the life stories
of former slaves, the guide will be particularly useful
in studying the topics raised in this issue of HISTORY
NOW:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/oralhist/ohfwp.html
For the everyday lives of the Hemingses and other African
Americans at Monticello, go to the “Research and
Collections” section of the Monticello website
and check all the links under “People” (which
include a wide variety of material on free and bond
servants on the plantation) and the links under “Plantation
and Slave Life”:
http://www.monticello.org/research/index.html
