[Pages H1316-H1326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

RACISM, DEADLY DIFFERENCES AND DIVERSITY PROBLEMS

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I would like to address a number of issues
that I think are very much related to the problem of racism, of deadly
differences, and diversity problems that have broken out all over the
world and we are part of trying to resolve.
A lot of them occur right here at home. In my own city of New York, a
poll was taken that showed, and the New York Times announced today,
that one-fourth of all New Yorkers, white and black New Yorkers,
believe that the police of New York City behave quite differently with
people of color, with minority groups, African Americans, Hispanics,
and Asians, they behave quite differently with them than they do with
whites. Whites as well as blacks have come to this conclusion. One-
fourth of all the citizens of New York believe that this is the case.
So we have a serious problem right at home with a very crucial body
of people, the police, who are so vital to the law and order of the
city for everybody, everybody's protection.
Then we have far-ranging problems like those that are taking place in
Kosovo and Yugoslavia where this government is spending large amounts
of money, we have spent about $9 billion, to try to work through
situations in Yugoslavia which evolve out of racial and ethnic and
religious differences. Whereas I was all in favor, of course, of
extending the resources of this country into that situation, I think
that the Yugoslavia situation is totally out of hand. And $9 billion,
more than $9 billion is enough to invest.
Our Nation is an indispensable Nation available, and I think that is
important to help with trouble spots anywhere in the world. But we
should not let ourselves get sucked into any trouble spot for so long
that it absorbs an inordinate amount of resources and takes away the
possibility of helping with other problems.
I think it was right that we went into Haiti to help liberate Haiti
from people who had taken over from a duly elected democratic
government. I think it was important that we went into Somalia. I think
it is important that the President has shown great concern, and there
are some resources now deployed in Rwanda. All of these situations,
Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Northern Ireland. Our
President did not dispense large amounts of military aid in Northern
Ireland, but his own personal commitment there and the use of American
diplomatic skills have helped to abate that situation.

But all over the country, all over the world, we have these conflicts
based on differences and diversity. They are probably going to go on
for a long, long

[[Page H1317]]

time. We have to learn how to live with them and to try to abate them
and try to lessen them. Hopefully over the long period, decades and
centuries, we can eliminate some of them.
First we have to understand how difficult it is and how deeply
entrenched it is and how it is important that governmental resources be
invested in the effort to lessen the amount of racism, hate crimes,
ethnic rivalries that exist and might explode at any moment. It is
important.
It is important that we understand the need to deal, first of all,
with those that are closest to us. One of the closest conflicts and
ongoing problems in America is racism related to the long history of
African Americans who were held in slavery for 232 years.
We do not like to think that 232 years of slavery had any
consequences or that there is anything special about this particular
group and their relationship with the rest of the Americans, just as we
do not like to think there is any special relationship between the
Native Americans and the rest of the American people, that there should
be any special consideration.
But surely there ought to be some special consideration about the
relationship between the descendents of the Native Americans and the
rest of the Americans in view of the fact that history was quite brutal
with respect to the Native Americans.
History was quite brutal with respect to African Americans who are a
group of people in this country, in this hemisphere, only because they
were transported to this hemisphere against their will.
So I want to talk about all of these things. In the news today, there
was also an account of a new effort to try to fight slavery in the
Sudan and slavery in Mauritania. We have some groups that are American
based that are actually raising money to buy slaves from the Sudanese.
The Sudanese are practicing slavery in a very cruel and inhuman way
even to this day. They say it is all part of the Civil War. Only the
women and children of the enemy are captured, and they have a right to
take them and use them for bounty and whatever. Whatever the reason
given, it is still slavery.
In 1999, in Sudan, which is a country of people who are of dark hue,
one might say black, a lot of black people, whatever range of color
they may have, there is slavery.
There is slavery in Mauritania. Arabs and people of an Arab descent
and African descent, all in Mauritania. But in Mauritania, there are
some black people who are still enslaved in 1999.
I thought that was interesting that that appeared on the news today.
At the same time I heard on the news this morning, and I listen usually
to National Public Radio, and there was some bad news about Northern
Ireland. A civil rights lawyer in Northern Ireland, Catholic civil
rights activist lawyer was assassinated with a fire bomb. A fire bomb
blew up her car.
So we have reminders of many kinds of how these ethnic tensions,
religion. In the case of Ireland, it is religion that has divided
people. It is very interesting how human beings seem to look for
reasons for conflict. They want to accentuate differences. So we have
people who are ethnically pretty much the same, racially the same in
Northern Ireland, but the religious differences have set off a long
time feud which is quite violent and bloody.
In Somalia, we could not understand what the problem was in Somalia.
They were all most of the same religion, same race. There were no deep
tribal divisions. They all spoke the same language.
Yet, in Somalia, the human beings there found ways to accentuate some
differences. That was generally based on pure politics, people having
power ambitions in one area and organizing their own gang; and over
here, they would organize another gang. There were no tribes, but they
created tribes out of interests that were really power interests.
Of course here is the crux of the problem. Most of the time, these
ethnic tensions, racial tensions and divisions are accelerated and
exacerbated by people who do want power, demagogues who exploit the
situation for power reasons.
We have 232 years of slavery in this Nation because, for economic
reasons, which also are power reasons, for economic reasons, it was
beneficial to enslave a population and provide the free labor from one
end of the country to the other. It was mostly in the south, the
plantations. There was a long-term need for free labor and large
amounts of labor there.
But in New York, large amounts of slaves were used to build the
original city. Slavery was just as cruel there as it was anywhere else.
The third largest slave port of the country at one time was a New York
slave port. So all of these things still have their long-term fallout
on history. It would do well for us to pay more attention to history.
I applaud President Clinton and his appointment of a commission on
race relations to at least stimulate a set of discussions and dialogues
among the American people about the issue of race and differences in
relationships.
Some people say it got out of hand and it was not very productive. It
only had a year's life. For whatever the problems were, it was still a
positive, constructive action. I hope the President will follow it up
with further action. But more importantly, here is an area where I
think foundations and philanthropists could make a contribution.

{time} 1715

There are a lot of controversies that are inevitably associated with
anything related to race relations. The controversies could probably
better be handled by the philanthropic sector. And the kind of
controversies they are, they are not so much current but scholarly
discussions and discussions of positions and attitudes, and I think
they ought to be handled more with foundations and other philanthropic
organizations financing those areas than the government. But the
government should stimulate that discussion. President Clinton started
the discussion, and I think we ought to, as a government, follow up on
that.
I think that the resolution of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Tony
Hall), that called for the government of America to apologize for
slavery, which aroused so much controversy and ill feeling across the
country, I think that is still a pertinent item of discussion. I think
it is a lightning rod that we should really discuss.
Why should the American government not apologize for slavery when we
are seeing the governments of Japan and of Germany and various other
governments that exist now that were not really there, the German
government was not there when Hitler was there, but the present
government has apologized in certain areas; as well as the government
of Japan has apologized to the Korean women who were forced into
prostitution and to some others; and other apologies are taking place.
The Swiss government just apologized and set up a fund to the victims
of greed the holocaust victims of greed, where they put the money in
Swiss banks and the Swiss banks used various maneuvers to keep those
people from getting money.
So it is a discussion which carries civilization forward, and a
discussion of an American apology for slavery would do a great deal in
that direction.
I think the South Africans set an example for civilized nations of
today and the future that should not be ignored. The Government of
South Africa today, the new Government of South Africa today, that took
over just 4 years ago, insisted that it would not seek justice, it
would seek reconciliation. That was a very important and unprecedented
move by a national government.
Here is a government made up of a new majority. The majority of the
people, about 40 million black Africans in South Africa, had been
oppressed for many decades by the white South Africans. The black
majority took over in South Africa. The government was made up of a
government elected by the people and most of the people in power were
black. Instead of seeking justice, which would have resulted in large
numbers of trials, executions, and a whole lot of revenge-seeking, the
South African government that took power proclaimed that it wanted
reconciliation. And no matter how horrible the crime was, no matter how
horrible the political crime was related to the politics of the long
years of oppression and the fight against apartheid, they would allow
people to come

[[Page H1318]]

forward and, if they would tell the truth, they would offer amnesty to
those folks who told the truth.
More important than the individuals who came forward and the
testimonies that took place and the whole unprecedented kind of
activity that they developed, is the spirit that that sent out
throughout the whole country; that we are not going to look at the
past, we are not going to live in the past to the point where it
becomes a noose around the throat of the future and the present. We are
not going to seek justice to the point where it destroys the
possibility for reconciliation and progress.
So reconciliation. And this was a new idea to me, I never thought of
it that way before Nelson Mandela and the Government of South Africa
today put it forward. Reconciliation is more important than justice.
Reconciliation is more important than justice.
We hammered home this same theme when Jean Bertrand Aristide was
restored to his rightful place in Haiti. The government of the United
States insisted that he also follow the same policy. We made an
official request that the Aristide government not seek justice but,
instead, emphasize reconciliation.
That whole approach, of course, is being carried out in Bosnia and
Serbia and Croatia. We are paying billions for that, too much in my
opinion, but we are leading the way to a process of reconciliation,
which will provide for building for a future rather than justice.
I do not say justice is not important, and I do not think human
society can exist unless we have forms of punishment. People must be
punished, and there must be an understanding that individuals will be
held accountable for crimes. I do not think anybody would ever say that
Hitler should have been treated the way some of the leaders of Haiti
were treated.
The United States Government actually paid the rent, leased the homes
of the dictators in Haiti that they deposed. Cedras and the other two
who were at the top of the official terror apparatus in Haiti were
treated like princes and helped to get out of the place and given
enough income to maintain themselves for a long time. They are still
out there alive, and may come back. That is a danger. Instead of
justice, it was important that they be moved from the scene peacefully
in order to facilitate reconciliation.
Now, I do not think the Nuremberg trials were wrong, I do not think
the trials of the Japanese perpetrators of massive violence in Asia,
the people who attacked Pearl Harbor, I do not think it was wrong to
punish them. That is going quite far. But it is something to consider,
this whole reconciliation process. And in the case of the nations now
that participate in reconciliation, we are seeing a more positive
result as a result of reconciliation being placed above justice.
But the South Africans in the process of seeking reconciliation felt
it was very important to have truth. Truth was a very important part of
establishing reconciliation. I think in America we have missed that
point with respect to race relations, and certainly relationships
between the Native Americans and the rest of the American population,
and certainly with relationship between the African Americans and the
rest of the American population.
We have never admitted, as a government, that great crimes were done
to the African Americans who were enslaved, and that the consequences
of 232 years of slavery need to be studied. The truth needs to be laid
out, and we need to take steps to combat some of those consequences.
A very interesting individual specific development is taking place
which I think we ought to focus on as part of the way to get more truth
thrown on the whole phenomenon of American slavery. There is a
controversy which is made for America because it is very individual, it
is very personal, and it involves a love story. It is the story of
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Sally Hemings was a slave at Monticello under Thomas Jefferson. For
many, many years there has been a controversy about whether or not
there was a relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas
Jefferson which produced some children, four or five children. The
controversy is not about whether Thomas Jefferson might have had sex
with Sally Hemings. Many slave owners had sex with their slaves, and
there are millions of mulattos that resulted from those unions to
provide concrete evidence that many slave owners had sexual
relationships with their slaves. The problem with Jefferson is that it
appears that he had a long-term relationship with Sally Hemings, that
he treated her as if she was his common law wife.

For 38 years, Sally Hemings was on the scene, starting from the time
that she went to Paris as a nurse and maid for Jefferson's youngest
daughter, to the time that Jefferson died. She was there all the time.
She was there in Paris. She could have gone free; stayed in Paris and
been a free person. She did not. She came back to Monticello. She was
in Monticello during the whole time that Jefferson was President. And
when he left the Presidency, she remained at Monticello, and she was
there when he died.
There was a big public scandal related to the relationship between
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. A man named Callendar, who had been
a so-called friend of Jefferson, Jefferson had gotten him out of prison
when John Adams, with his alien and sedition laws put large numbers of
people in prison who were accused of treason on the basis of what they
wrote and the criticisms they made of the government, Callendar was
imprisoned. And, of course, Jefferson was against the alien and
sedition laws and against the federalist dictatorship that was being
generated.
Once Jefferson was elected as President, Callendar was set free.
Callendar had written articles and done some things with Jefferson's
party and Jefferson, and Callendar wanted to become a postmaster. When
Jefferson would not make him a postmaster, Callendar turned on
Jefferson and went to Monticello and got all the gossip together, and
he was the one who accused Jefferson of having a mistress with children
at Monticello.
It became a big public scandal. It was in newspapers from one part of
the country to the other. Jefferson was ridiculed. John Quincy Adams
wrote a ballad making fun of him, et cetera, et cetera. Jefferson never
admitted anything, of course. He never even commented. But the
relationship was not ended. Sally Hemings was not sent away from
Monticello. She remained there. She remained there during his
Presidency, and then after he went back, she remained there, and until
his death, as I have just said several times. So Sally Hemings and
Thomas Jefferson, the questions remained.
A historian recently, not so recently, about 15 years ago, documented
the fact that Jefferson was at Monticello every time that Sally Hemings
conceived children. The period before the birth of her children, he was
at Monticello at all those times. They had other various things that
they documented in his notations in his farm books, et cetera, which
indicated that Sally Hemings was very much a presence at Monticello.
There are certain letters, of course, and other kinds of things that
are missing from Jefferson's numerous writings that were also timed at
a time when he had some kind of important relationship that might have
had a record of some kind of relationship with Sally Hemings. Many of
those letters are missing. No documentation.
Sally Hemings is erased from history. We do not have any photographs
of her or any descriptions of her, except the one or two from her son
and from a man who had been a slave at Monticello, Isaac Jefferson.
So I will talk about the controversy that has now mounted to the
point where so much documentation existed which confirmed the fact that
there was a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings that a DNA test
was developed. A scientist who happened to be residing at Monticello
carefully put together a DNA test. He secretly got permission from
Jefferson offspring, known offspring of the Jefferson family, and he
got permission and DNA from the offspring of Sally Hemings. And after
putting it through a very rigorous set of tests, the confirmation is
that it is very probable. The DNA tests bear out the other kinds of
documentation that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' youngest
child and, therefore, it makes all of the other evidence more credible.

[[Page H1319]]

I am going to quote from an article that I wrote on this whole
matter, and I think I will save some time and make the point that I am
trying to make tonight better if I read from this article. It is
entitled ``Kingpins for Truth and Reconciliation, Thomas and Sally''.
``DNA evidence confirming Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings
could open the door for a more profound dialogue on slavery and race
relations.''
If that strikes my colleagues as strange, let me read it again. ``DNA
evidence confirming Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings could
open the door for a more profound dialogue on slavery and race
relations''.
This portion of slavery that has never been discussed fully is
related to the fact that there were intimate relations between the
races. From a power point of view, it usually was the slave owners and
the overseers and the people who had privileges and power who
interacted with the female slaves. But out of that is a set of truths
that come concerning myths about inferiority, myths about abilities to
coexist, a number of things which not only are documented and
reinforced by the new evidence of Jefferson's relationship with Sally
Hemings, but there have been several books written lately which I think
also fall into this same pattern.
I am going to read first from my article to make things shorter.

{time} 1730

I will read some excerpts from it. ``Only a few months after the
release of the report of the Advisory Board of the President's
Initiative on Race, and that report is entitled `One America In The
21st Century: Forging a New Future,' a scientific report has confirmed
the likelihood that President Thomas Jefferson was the father of the
children of his slave and long-time companion, Sally Hemings. These two
events can be constructively related.''
Let me repeat. ``Only a few months after the release of the report of
the Advisory Board of the President's Initiative on Race, and the
report is entitled `One America In The 21st Century, Forging a New
Future,' a scientific report has confirmed the likelihood that
President Thomas Jefferson was the father of the children of his slave
and long-time companion Sally Hemings. These two events can be
constructively related.''
And again, I want to point out that two new books have come out which
talk about slave owners and their children by slaves. And I read only
the review of this. I have not had a chance to read the book. The
review appeared in the Washington Post. It is called ``The Hairstons,
an American Family in Black and White,'' published by St. Martin's
Press. And it talks about a family where slaves and slave owners and
the personnel of the plantations were intermixed, and it singles out
one tragic story of one slave owner who decided that he loved his slave
wife, common-law wife. Some would call it a mistress or concubine. I do
not think he thought of it that way. He loved her so much that he
willed her daughter a large part of his property. And there was a big
fight to take that property away, which succeeded of course, and she
was left in slavery. But a very concrete tragedy there.
Another book that recently came out is called ``Slaves in the
Family.'' The author of that one is Edward Ball. ``Slaves in the
Family'' by Edward Ball goes back and deals with a South Carolina based
huge plantation and a large family over several generations and he
shows how the intermarriage and the mixtures came down to the present.
I think it is important, another book that also talks about this in
more general terms and had the advantage of being part of a public
television series is ``Africans in America.'' ``Africans in America''
brings out some very interesting facts that are little known about
slavery and the freed men and the whole relationship with the general
population, etcetera.
So returning to my article, ``The new discussions of the life,
philosophy, and politics of Thomas Jefferson might do more to
facilitate an honest assessment of black-white relations in America
than the report which is laden with facts.''
The report is the ``One America in the 21st Century'' that was put
out by the Initiative On Race. I thought it was an interesting report.
But, as my colleagues can see from my remarks here, I do not think it
went nearly far enough. But if we took the report together with the new
facts, together these two developments could greatly enhance our
understanding of an extremely complex phenomena.
``The weakness of the report of the President's Advisory Board is
that it is thorough about obvious kinds of things that we all know
about but it lacks the vital ingredient of profundity. The report is
competent, respectful, universal in its coverage, balanced, and not at
all an embarrassment to the White House. However, when the depth of the
deliberations of that report are measured against the complexity of the
mission and the intensity of the challenge, the appropriate grade for
this noble but feeble effort would be B- or C+. Our national dialogue
would be greatly benefited by the establishment of several adequately
financed commissions on group relations.
``Native Americans certainly deserve their own separate historical
documentation and analysis. African-Americans require no less than an
objective statement of history, a thorough and comprehensive study as a
basis for the unraveling of the many complexities of our present
interaction with mainstream society.
``Contrary to the beliefs of many African-Americans, as well as
others, current policy-making would be greatly enhanced by a world-
class study of American slavery and the thwarted reconstruction effort
that followed the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendments. Such a study would be useful if it is done in the spirit of
truth and reconciliation.
``The noble embryo that the President's Initiative has planted should
be allowed to sprout and grow. Using the bully pulpit of the White
House, the President should call on private foundations to finance such
a world-class project and he should recommend that the world's top
scholars and thinkers, including Nobel Prize winners, be recruited to
provide research and editorial guidance for such a study.
``One of the first items that should be placed on the research and
analysis agenda is a controversial question of the relationship between
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. It would be a human interest case
study offering great illuminations for American history. It could also
be an educational landmark love story that captures the attention of a
mass audience and forces them to confront the institution of slavery in
all of its dimensions.
``The scientific validation of Jefferson's paternity with respect to
Hemings' children is a historical blockbuster. DNA evidence has exposed
the fact that respected academicians and historians have promulgated or
tolerated a dangerous and suffocating denial of certain self-evident
truths about American slavery. This same distortion process applies to
too much of American history as it relates to slavery, the Civil War
and reconstruction.
``Unlike the very civilized behavior of the new rulers of South
Africa, the United States has never had a truth and reconciliation
commission. As part of a larger effort, the story of Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings could provide a potent spark to generate a bonfire of
new revelations which will increase the possibility of long-term,
improved black-white reconciliation.''
Most people would say that they do not see how any probing of such a
relationship could lead to anything but more controversy, more
hostility, and more antagonism between the races, starting with the
numerous African-Americans who want to throw Thomas Jefferson down from
his throne because now it has been confirmed that he took advantage of
a slave woman. Well, I do not think the evidence confirms anything of
the nature.
Slave owners were in a position to take advantage of all their
slaves. That is true. But the evidence with respect to Thomas Jefferson
is that this particular woman he cared a great deal for. He maintained
her near him in Monticello, in the mansion, for 38 years despite a
scandal that normally would lead a politician to distance himself from
such a person.
``The story of Thomas and Sally may be summarized as follows: While
Jefferson was serving as the American ambassador in Paris, Sally
Hemings arrived as a maid for his younger daughter who sailed from
Virginia to join her

[[Page H1320]]

father. Jefferson seduced her, and the pregnant Sally returned to
America only after he promised that all of her children would be set
free. Under French law, she could have remained a free person in
France.

``During the first year of his presidency, a journalist exposed the
fact that Jefferson had a `slave mistress' who was the mother of his
children. The third president of the United States refused to answer
this charge. He also never removed Sally Hemings from Monticello. They
were together for 38 years at Monticello until Jefferson died.
``Three of their children were allowed to `run.' '' Jefferson noted
in his farm books and his accounts that whenever one of the Hemings
children left the plantation they really were set free with his
consent, he would just note in his book that they were allowed to run.
Because to set them free required certain kinds of filing of papers;
and in Virginia, once you were set free, you had a limited amount of
time to get out of the State. There were complications. So they were
just allowed to run and the notations were made.
Nevertheless, these same children who were allowed to run always
ended up in urban settings where they got new footing and it was
assumed that Jefferson, and his friends had helped to establish his
children in those new settings to enable them to thrive. Two of the
children were set free in Jefferson's will.
``With the DNA testing confirming Jefferson paternity, the journey so
competently and eloquently begun by Fawn Brodie with her best selling
book entitled ``Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History'' has now reached
its peak.''
That is more than 15 years ago that Fawn Brodie, who was a professor
at one of California universities, wrote a book called ``Thomas
Jefferson: An Intimate History.'' The book was denounced by the
Regional Daughters of Virginia, and a number of other historical groups
denounced Fawn Brodie. But her set of facts, her documentation, was
used to set in motion a process that has continued to today. And
finally we have the DNA testing.
``Despite vicious criticisms from the establishment historians still
prolonging the Confederate view of American history, Brodie's
scholarship propelled the search for truth forward. While the
relationship between Jefferson and Hemings was not her primary
preoccupation, Brodie provided this story with a rightful proportion of
the space,'' and she integrated the story of Sally Hemings with the
rest of her narrative.
``Brodie's thorough account of Jefferson as a failing businessman on
the brink of bankruptcy alongside the documentation of the continuous
presentation of Sally Hemings may both raise and answer an obvious
question: Why didn't Jefferson marry a wealthy widow or a daughter of a
wealthy person to end his financial woes?'' I repeat. ``Brodie's
thorough account of Jefferson as a failing businessman on the brink of
bankruptcy alongside the documentation of the continuous presence of
Sally Hemings may both raise and answer an obvious question: Why didn't
Jefferson matter a wealthy widow or the daughter of a wealthy person to
end his financial woes?
``With an eye more focused, and operating from a courtroom point of
view, a more recent book by Annette Gordon-Bennett updates the work of
Brodie, and with her remarkable presentation of the evidence, has
stimulated the more recent debates which has helped produce the DNA
testing. Now all sides must respond to the scientific evidence. In her
book, `Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy,'
Gordon-Bennett goes on to indict the establishment historians for their
gross neglect of vital records.
``Barbara Chase-Riboud in the novel entitled `Sally Hemings,' ''
which was written based on facts related in Fawn Brodie's nonfiction
work, the novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud ``offers a uniquely constructed
and very ambitious fictional account to interpret the relationship
between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Her point of view
repeatedly emerges crystal clear throughout the novel. Although her
writing is often laborious and strained, she sometimes reaches dramatic
heights in her depictions of emotions of her imagined victims of
Jefferson's patriarchal and slave-owning powers. Chase-Riboud is able
fictionally to occupy the bodies not souls of Sally and her children,
and from within them she confronts what she imagines to be the cold
blue insensitive eyes of the master of Monticello.''
Chase-Riboud depicts Jefferson as a patronizing anti-woman, cruel
oppressor.
``From this novelist, Jefferson is a white, southern aristocrat
trapped within the personality parameters of his class and his time.''
That is her point of view. ``He is also a male chauvinist pig who raped
and ruined a young slave girl who is left with no alternative except to
`love him to death.'
``Chase-Riboud forces Sally to become a drug to afflict the addict
Jefferson til death parts them. The merits of Jefferson's public
achievements and historic accomplishments can never offset his intimate
behavior flaws in the opinion of Barbara Chase-Riboud,'' who is a
female story teller of African descent.

{time} 1745

Each day since the new DNA discovery, I read or hear the same kind of
intense condemnations of Jefferson, although they are usually more
blunt and crude and they lack the redeeming eloquence of Barbara Chase-
Riboud.
I hear them from African-American females who want to dismiss
Jefferson and forget about the fact that Jefferson was a precursor to
Lincoln and the whole idealistic bold advance of Jefferson made it
possible to create an America which would later emancipate its slaves.
I am compelled personally to register intense disagreement with
Chase-Riboud and all those others who want to knock Jefferson off his
pedestal for that reason. There are people on the other side, the
conservatives and the Confederates, who want to dismiss Jefferson now
because, if he did have a serious relationship with a slave, then he
does not deserve to remain in their pantheon. But let me deal with
those who are African American who refuse to accept Jefferson for what
he really is and what he did contribute both to America and to the
emancipation of the slaves.
Any interpretation of the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
relationship that discounts or trivializes Jefferson as an idealist, a
visionary, an intellectual, a pragmatic statesman and a crafty
Machiavellian politician is not acceptable in my view. He was an
idealist and his ideals are still very important to what happened, the
sequence of events that took place in America, even those that led to
the Emancipation Proclamation. The fact that such a giant as Thomas
Jefferson chose to keep Sally Hemings at his side for 38 years opens
the door to a myriad of magnificent questions: Does the length of the
relationship despite the inconvenience caused by public exposure and
scandal clearly show that it was not a lust but a love relationship? If
he did not ``love'' Sally Hemings, then why did he not just keep her as
a concubine while he married a woman of wealth to solve his ever
present financial problems? Would a confirmation of his deep love for
Sally Hemings not also clarify a number of the other riddles and
contradictions which are related to this so-called ``sphinx''? The last
great book on Jefferson was called ``The Sphinx.''
The same youthful Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of
Independence, with an original draft that condemned slavery, also set
forth a racist platform in the book called ``Notes on the State of
Virginia.'' I repeat. The same youthful Jefferson who wrote the
Declaration of Independence, with an original draft that condemned
slavery, also set forth a racist platform in ``Notes on the State of
Virginia.'' As a young Congressman, however, Jefferson led the fight to
stop the spread of slavery into the new States. He led the fight to
stop the spread of slavery, and he lost that by one vote, by the way.
He lost that bill by one vote. He stated that slaves had a limited
capacity for learning. Nevertheless, Jefferson urged at one time that
slaves should be educated and then set free. In the oppressive social
and political environment of Virginia, why did Jefferson speak out of
both sides of his mouth? Why were there contradictions? Why did
Jefferson not just settle down comfortably as a pure acknowledged slave
owner and

[[Page H1321]]

racist? In his philosophical restlessness and his discontent with his
own public positions, one can find the wellsprings of Jefferson's
greatness. The politician in his pronouncements surrendered to his
peers while privately he subscribed to greater truths. His love for
Sally was probably a constant internal irritant. This lifelong
reverence for his chambermaid is also a vital and legitimate clue to
what he personally believed with respect to the equality of the races.
I said that Jefferson was an idealist, he was a visionary, he was an
intellectual, but he was also a pragmatic statesman and a crafty
Machiavellian politician. Jefferson founded the first political party
in America. Jefferson united with a guy called Aaron Burr who most
people did not trust to form the first political party in America.
Aaron Burr, true to his reputation, later betrayed Jefferson, but that
was necessary to get an opposition party going to the Federalists.
Jefferson pretended he was not interested in being elected President,
while he was plotting all the time to become President and successfully
managed to become President. Jefferson was a politician, and I do not
find the fact that he made contradictory statements to be a great
puzzle. He is not a sphinx to me. Politicians do make contradictory
statements all the time. Unfortunately that happens and we say it is in
order to achieve some more noble goal that we distort the truth or we
do not tell what we really think. But Jefferson was not only a
politician, he was a southern politician. He was rooted in the
plantation culture of Virginia. Consider all that and consider the fact
that he still led the fight on the floor of the House of
Representatives to stop the spread of slavery into the other States.
In the Virginia environment where slavery escalated downward into an
ever more savage and criminal institution, did Jefferson's attachment
to Sally and her children keep the embers of his antislavery sentiments
burning? If there was some way that we could miraculously recover the
missing letters of Jefferson, would we find corrections of his most
racist utterings? Would we find apologies to Sally Hemings? Would we
find expressions of his great love for Sally in his own insightful
words?
Jefferson, while he was President, also later narrowly fought for and
narrowly passed the legislation which ended the importation of slaves
into the country. That was very difficult. It took his son-in-law,
Randolph. His son-in-law Randolph had to help him a great deal to pass
that legislation. It is probable that the recent DNA clarification will
generate more than new scholarly debates among academicians. More
fictional interpretations in poetry and novels and drama are inevitable
in the quest to fill in the gaps of a tale that is about both love and
power. I think that the accounts of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings,
the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the history of Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings is now at the point where it is a bit of a
legend and it will take on all the trappings of a legend, and Barbara
Chase-Riboud's novel will not be the last novel. There will be many
novels, there will be many plays, there will be other kinds of things
done in connection with this love story which also tells a whole lot
about power in America and about the idealism and the kind of people
who helped to make this Nation great, the kind of person who helped to
twist events in a way which led the way, established the prerequisite
for what later happened with Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.
As much as he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, the
third President of the United States and the purchaser of the Louisiana
Territory, Thomas Jefferson was also the concerned father of several
children of African descent. With unfortunate limitations and
restraints, the evidence is that Jefferson loved his common-law wife
and his children. He was not a brilliant, cold-blooded beast.
The hypocrisy he felt compelled to perpetrate certainly created a
personal life wracked with intense conflicts.

Jefferson's public statements on race and slavery often stand in
opposition to his private passion and compassion. However, when his
intimate relationship with Sally is affixed to selected public actions,
it is clear that he consciously made a vital contribution to the
abolition of slavery. There are many who contend that without
Jefferson, there could never have been an emancipating Abraham Lincoln.
Congressman Jefferson attempted to halt the expansion of slavery into
new States and failed by one vote in the House of Representatives. As
President he narrowly won a victory for a law that finally ended the
legal importation of slaves. It is also important to note that
Jefferson's advocacy for the rights of the common white man had to take
roots before Lincoln could fight the war that freed the slaves. Let me
repeat. It is also important to note that Jefferson's advocacy for the
rights of the common white man had to take roots before Lincoln could
fight the war that freed the slaves.
Jefferson was quoted by the slave mongers as well as by the
abolitionists as they made their cases during his time, or shortly
after his death and up to the Civil War, into the Civil War. Both sides
claimed Jefferson. Until today he is still cited by racists as well as
progressives. The new DNA clarification of his paternity of Sally
Hemings' children may finally end this ideological tug of war. In a
superficial response, the races may jettison the man who treated the
slave mother of his children as if she were his common-law wife.
A more profound response from progressives in general and African
Americans specifically would be a new celebration of Jefferson as the
prerequisite to Lincoln. It is an historical fact that one of
Jefferson's proteges, Edward Coles, took his slaves from Virginia to
Illinois where he gave them their freedom and acres of land. Edward
Coles later became governor of Illinois, he defeated a referendum
seeking to make Illinois a slave State, and he was an active politician
in Illinois at the time of Lincoln's election and at the time of the
Civil War. More than mere words and ideas connected Thomas Jefferson to
Abraham Lincoln.
Celebrations of the new Jefferson discoveries and expressions of
gratitude to the science of genetics which produced DNA testing I think
are very much in order. What the historians and the researchers of
several generations refused to examine objectively has now been
determined to be almost certainly true. The white male southern
academicians who have dominated the interpretation of pre and post
Civil War history have now been thoroughly discredited. Their refusal
to accept overwhelming evidence with respect to Jefferson, of
necessity, raises serious questions about the integrity of the rest of
their scholarship.
Some obvious indictments of these proponents of the Confederate view
of history are now in order. The establishment historians are guilty of
ignoring the record of widespread miscegenation fostered by white men
and its implications. Mainstream scholars have refused to offer any
meaningful expositions of the ``breeding farm'' industry, for example.
On the other hand, post-Civil War terrorism and violence by the
defeated rebels has been glorified. ``The Birth of a Nation'' movie was
an interpretation that has never been answered by academicians with a
true and thorough story of the terrorism, the murder and the mayhem
which returned the blacks of the South to a state of semi-slavery. I am
talking about what a Truth and Reconciliation Commission could have
accomplished. Instead of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we had
John Wilkes Booth. We had Booth assassinating Lincoln. We had Andrew
Johnson, who took over at that point, the last thing he wanted was
truth, and as a result we had a downward slide back into the era when
terror, murder and mayhem for the blacks in the South returned, and it
took us another 100, or more than 100 years to get back to restoring
the civil rights of the African-American population, certainly of the
South.
If we had some truth, if we had some honest historians to shed some
light along the way on some of these things, we might have made
different kinds of public policy decisions and, of course, the reason I
am here today is because there is a definite connection. Our present
race problems, our present serious race problems as far as African
Americans are concerned are rooted in 232 years of slavery. There are
still people who make speeches about African Americans being inferior,
African

[[Page H1322]]

Americans are prone to criminal activities, African Americans are
generally not as well off as other people. Even immigrants who came to
this country much later than the African Americans have accumulated
more wealth. There are answers to all of these assertions, to all of
these misstatements of fact. There are answers, but unless you have a
concerted, systematic pursuit of truth, you are never going to be able
to establish the answers which will allow us to have meaningful public
policymaking.
In summary, the recent kingpin discovery which confirms the common-
law marriage relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
has generated new demands for more historical truth to support current
reconciliation between whites and African Americans. I am saying that
the recent kingpin discovery which confirms the common-law marriage
relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has generated
new demands for more historical truth to support current reconciliation
between whites and African Americans.

{time} 1800

Madam Speaker, I believe that the truth can support reconciliation. I
do not think the truth has to be a generator of more hostility and ill
will.
Since there was no Truth In Reconciliation Commission established
following the Civil War, it would be wise to currently create a
substitute project. That has come as close as we can to a Truth In
Reconciliation Commission. We did not have the advantage of the South
African Nation has when it tried to get rid of a large part of the
baggage and the garbage related to racial oppression, the
victimization, the response to the victimization, the people seeking
revenge. All kinds of poison existed that the South African government
is trying to get rid of by establishing a Truth In Reconciliation
Commission. We had no such commission following the Civil War.
Instead of a comprehensive approach similar to the Truth In
Reconciliation Commission and instead of a comprehensive approach,
which was attempted by the President's Commission on Race, it is
recommended that smaller components of the overall problem of U.S. race
relations be explored separately. I recommend that we have this kind of
Nobel Prize guided winner, guided truth-seeking group who would write
an objective history for us of slavery. I would recommend that it be
explored in segments. An objective rewrite of the history of slavery in
America constitutes a productive beginning. They may want to go back
and write the history of slavery for all times. They may want to write
the history of the exploitation and the destruction of the Indian
Nations, the Native Americans, on this continent. They may want to get
segments in order to help tell the whole story. But certainly the
history of slavery in America would constitute a productive beginning,
an objective history of what it was all about. You know, what does it
mean to keep people for 232 years in bondage, what was the cruelty, and
the abuse of children and the attempt to obliterate the humanity of
human beings? What were the consequences of that?
And as I said earlier, a consortium of foundations could finance such
a sweeping study, and Nobel Prize winning scholars throughout the world
could be recruited to supervise such a study and to guarantee the
objectivity of such a study. In that demonstration of extraordinary and
original insight into the dynamics of civilization development and
nation building the recently formed government of South Africa, the
government of Nelson Mandela, has pointed the way out of
contradictions, the way out of conflicts and enmities which heretofore
had seemed to be inevitable. To avoid the endless sufferings and social
retardations inflicted by lies, guilt and preoccupations with revenge,
nations must labor vigorously. The process of striving must be
supported systematically and with adequate resources by governments.
Since America has not yet matched the South Africans in their
recognition of the power of this approach, let us imagine the ghost of
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings holding hands as they hover over us.
We must strive harder to acquire insights from the emotion laden and
sociologically complex legend of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Madam Speaker, let me close by saying that I applaud and congratulate
the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
for a conference which they held on the weekend of March 5 which
brought together 20 scholars from all over the Nation to explore the
meaning of the relationship of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings for
American history, and they intend to publish an entire series of
writings on this subject. The University of Virginia and the Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation are moving in the right direction to take
an objective fact of history and use that fact of history for a very
positive purpose. If it helps America to seek reconciliation among the
races, then it will have made a great contribution.
Madam Speaker, before we can have reconciliation, we need to have
truth, and the truth of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemings is a magnificent truth that should be thoroughly
examined.
The article referred to follows:

Kingpins for truth and reconciliation: Thomas and Sally

dna evidence confirming Jefferson's relationship with sally Hemings
could open the door for a more profound dialogue on slavery and race
relations

Only a few months after the release of the report of the
Advisory Board of the President's Initiative on Race entitled
One America In The 21st Century: Forging A New Future, a
scientific report has confirmed the likelihood that President
Thomas Jefferson was the father of the children of his slave
and long-time companion, Sally Hemings. These two events can
be constructively related.
The new discussions of the life, philosophy and politics of
Thomas Jefferson might do more to facilitate an honest
assessment of black-white relations in America than this fact
laden official report. Or reviewed together these two
developments could greatly enhance our understanding of an
extremely complex phenomenon. The weakness of the report of
the President's Advisory Board is that it is thorough about
the obvious, but it lacks the vital ingredient of profundity.
The report is competent, respectful, universal in its
coverage, balanced and not at all an embarrassment to the
White House; however, when the depth of the deliberations is
measured against the complexity of the mission and the
intensity of the challenge, the appropriate grade for this
noble but feeble effort would be a B- or a C+.
Our national dialogue would be greatly benefitted by the
establishment of several adequately funded Commissions on
group relations. Native Americans certainly deserve their own
separate historical documentation and analysis. African
Americans require no less than an objective statement of
history, a thorough and comprehensive study, as the basis for
unraveling the many complexities of our present interaction
with mainstream society. Contrary to the beliefs of many
African Americans as well as others, current policy making
would be greatly enhanced by a world class study of American
slavery and the thwarted reconstruction effort. Such a study
would be useful if it is done in the spirit of ``truth and
reconciliation''. The noble embryo that the President's
initiative has planted should be allowed to sprout and grow.
Using the bully pulpit of the White House the President
should call on private Foundations to finance such a world
class project, and he should recommend that the world's top
scholars and thinkers, including Nobel Prize winners, be
recruited to provide research and editorial guidance.
One of the first items that should be placed on the
research and analysis agenda is the controversial question of
the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
It would be a human interest case study offering great
illuminations for American history. It could also be an
educational landmark love story that captures the attention
of a mass audience and forces them to confront the
institution of slavery in all of its dimensions. The
scientific validation of Jefferson's paternity with respect
to the Hemings children is a historical blockbuster. DNA
evidence has exposed the fact that respected academicians and
historians have promulgated or tolerated a dangerous and
suffocating denial of certain self-evident truths about
American history.
This same distortion process applies to too much of
American history as it relates to slavery, the civil war and
reconstruction. Unlike the very civilized behavior of the new
rulers of South Africa, the United States has never had a
Truth And Reconciliation Commission. As part of a larger
effort the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings could
provide a potent spark to generate a bonfire of new
revelations which will increase the possibility of long-term
improved black-white reconciliation.
The story of Thomas and Sally may be summarized as follows:
While Jefferson was serving as the American Ambassador in
Paris, Sally Hemings arrived as the maid for his youngest
daughter who sailed from Virginia to join her father.
Jefferson seduced her and the pregnant Sally returned to

[[Page H1323]]

America only after she promised that all of her children
would be set free. Under French law she could have remained
as a free person in France. During the fist year of his
presidency a journalist exposed the fact that Jefferson had a
slave mistress who was the mother of his children. The third
President of the U.S. refused to answer this charge. He also
never removed Sally Hemings from Monticello. They were
together for 38 years at Monticello until Jefferson died.
Three of their children were allowed to ``run'' and two were
set free in Jefferson's will.
With the DNA test confirming Jefferson paternity, the
journey, so completely and eloquently begun by Fawn M. Brodie
with her best selling Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History,
has now reached its peak. Despite vicious criticisms from the
establishment historians still promulgating the Confederate
view of American history, Brodie's scholarship propelled the
search for truth forward. While the relationship between
Jefferson and Hemings was not her primary preoccupation, she
provided this story with a rightful proportion of the space,
and she integrated it with the rest of her narrative.
Brodie's thorough account of Jefferson as a failing business
man on the brink of bankruptcy alongside the documentation of
the continuous presence of Sally Hemings may both raise and
answer an obvious question: Why didn't Jefferson marry a
wealthy widow or daughter and end his financial woes?
With an eye more focused, and operating from a court room
point-of-view, Annette Gordon-Bennett updates the work of
Brodie, and with her remarkable presentation of the evidence,
has stimulated the more recent debates which have helped to
produce the DNA testing. Now all sides must respond to the
scientific evidence. In her book, Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Gordon-Bennett
goes on to indict the establishment historians for their
gross neglect of vital records.
Barbara Chase Riboud in the novel, Sally Hemings, offers a
uniquely constructed and very ambitious fictional attempt to
interpret the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings. Her point-of-view repeatedly emerges crystal clear
throughout the novel. Although her writing is often laborious
and strained, she sometimes reaches dramatic heights in her
depictions of the emotions of her imagined victims of
Jefferson's partiarchal and slave owning powers. Chase-Riboud
is able to occupy the bodies and souls of Sally and her
children, from within them she confronts what she imagines to
be the cold blue insensitive eyes of the master of
Monticello.
For this novelist Jefferson is a white, Southern aristocrat
trapped within the personality parameters of his class and
his time. He is also a male chauvinist pig who raped and
ruined a young slave girl who is left with no alternative
except to ``love him to death.'' Chase-Riboud forces Sally to
become a drug to afflict the addict Jefferson til death parts
them. The merits of Jefferson's public achievements and
historic accomplishments can never offset his intimate
behavior flaws in the opinion of this female storyteller of
African descent. Each day since the new DNA discovery I read
or hear such intense condemnations of Jefferson although they
are usually more blunt and crude, and lack the redeeming
eloquence of Ms. Chase-Riboud.
This male writer of African descent is compelled to
register intense disagreement with Chase-Riboud and any
interpretation of the Thomas and Sally relationship that
discounts or trivializes Jefferson as an idealist, a
visionary, an intellectual, a pragmatic statesman and a
crafty Machiavellian politician. The fact that such a giant
chose to keep Sally Hemings at his side for thirty eight
years opens the door to a myriad of magnificent questions:
Does the length of the relationship, despite the
inconvenience caused by public exposure and scandal, clearly
show that it was not a lust, but a love relationship? If he
did not ``love'' Sally, then why didn't he just keep her as a
concubine while he married a woman of wealth to solve his
ever present financial problems? Would a confirmation of his
deep love for Sally not clarify a number of other riddles and
contradictions related to this ``Sphinx''?
The same youthful Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of
Independence, with an original draft that condemned slavery,
also set forth a racist platform in Notes On The State of
Virginia. As a young Congressman he led the fight to stop the
spread of slavery into the new states. He stated that slaves
had a limited capacity for learning, nevertheless, he urged
at one time that slaves should be educated and then set free.
In the oppressive social and political environment of
Virginia why didn't Jefferson just settle down comfortably as
a pure acknowledged racist? In his philosophical restlessness
and his discontent with his own public positions one can find
the well springs of his greatness. The politician in his
pronouncements surrendered to his peers while privately he
subscribed to greater truths. His love for Sally was probably
a constant internal irritant. This lifelong reverence for his
chamber maid is also a legitimate and vital clue to what he
personally believed with respect to the equality of the
races.
In the Virginia environment where slavery escalated
downward into an ever more savage and criminal institution,
did Jefferson's attachment to Sally and her children keep the
embers of his anti-slavery sentiments burning? If there was
some way that we could miraculously recover the missing
letters of Jefferson would we find corrections of his most
racist utterings? Would we find apologies to Sally Hemings?
Would we find expressions of his great love for Sally in his
own insightful words?
It is probable that the recent DNA clarification will
generate more than new scholarly debates among academicians.
More fictional interpretations in poetry, novels, and drama
are inevitable in the quest to fill in the gaps of a tale
that is about both love and power. The long term fascination
of this writer with Jefferson and Hemings has inspired a play
which is presently being considered for production and
publication. All quotes utilized below in this exposition are
taken from the manuscript of the play, Thomas and Sally.
In Act I, Scene 9 of Thomas and Sally, Jefferson recalls
his initial seduction of Sally following his wrenching
breakup with Maria Cosway in Paris:
Jefferson: Your mind is as splendid as your beautiful face,
Sally. Soon, you may become my French teacher. But not today.
In my present condition your energy would be too much for me.
Sally: I am so sorry that you have no time to talk to me.
When we sit and chat, for a tiny while, you make me feel that
it is Christmas morning.
Jefferson: How interesting. You think of Christmas when you
talk to me. But always when I see you it is the image of
Easter that rises in my mind. Always you remind me of Spring
with seeds bursting and flowers blooming. I have been leaving
early and I have missed you. Tomorrow we will practice French
together again. But not now. Today I am like a dog
exhausted after chasing a bone that finally had no meat on
it. For some women the ultimate excitement is to lead a
man through a maze, forever pulling him at a faster pace
until . . . Set the tea down here, Sally, and leave me. I
want to be alone. . . .
Sally: Yes, Marse Tom, I will go. But you look sick, sir.
(Begins to walk slowly toward the door while Jefferson lowers
his head into his hands again.)
Jefferson: Wait, Sally! (He suddenly raises his head and
calls after her.) Come and sit for a minute. (Motions toward
a chair near him.) Just for a minute. It is so cold in here.
Sally: (Pushing into the chair.) Yes, Marse Tom, I will sit
with you.
Jefferson: It is cold and your eyes are like two suns.
Always they seem so bright and full of heat.
Sally: No, Marse Tom, your eyes are bright. I see the sun
coming out of your eyes.
Jefferson: What you see in me is the reflection of your own
eyes.
Sally: Slaves are not supposed to look into the eyes of
masters, but you always make me look into your eyes, Marse
Tom. I try hard to turn away, but you make it so hard for me
not to look into your eyes. Please excuse me, sir. . . .
Jefferson: I did not mention Maria Cosway. Aha! You have
been spying on me, Sally. You are a naughty child.
Sally: Please, Marse Tom, do not call me a child. And I am
sorry that I called the name of the English woman. I do not
spy on you. But I do watch you. I watch everywhere you go,
whatever you do. I listen to everything you say.
Jefferson: I am not angry, Sally. I called you a spy in
jest. I have seen you watching me. And you have my permission
to call the name of the English woman. We have seen the last
of Maria Cosway. I will never follow her through that
mysterious maze again.
Sally: Maze? Is that the same as the labyrinth thing, Marse
Tom?
Jefferson: A maze, a labyrinth, a wolf-trap, a deadly bear
hug, a snare, quicksand in a swamp. She was all of these
crushed into one.
Sally: She fiddled with your heart. She led you around the
mulberry bush. Maria Cosway was a mean woman, Marse Tom.
Marse Tom! Your face is turning red like fire! . . .
Jefferson: (Raising his head abruptly.) Please, Sally, lay
your hands on my head again. Massage the back of my neck.
Your hands are so warm.
Sally: Yes, Marse Tom, I will rub your head; I will rub
your neck. Come back to life, Marse Tom. Do not leave me!
Jefferson: (Abruptly standing and pushing Sally down until
he towers over her and gazes down at her with a look of
astonishment.) Two suns are set in your eyes. And those same
eyes are filled with Virginia. There is no limit to what your
eyes can hold. I see the world when it first came. I see the
world going on forever. It is all there without
embellishment, without ornaments. It's all there shining in
your eyes. It shines even through your tears. (Bends down to
kiss her head. She responds by throwing her arms around his
long legs.). . . .
At the end of a failed attempt to separate him from Sally
by banning her from the Monticello mansion the two lovers are
united:
Scene thirteen: Sally joins Jefferson in the bedroom.
Jefferson is first alone. He has placed a light in a small
window above his bed.
Jefferson: Come, sweet Sally, and bring me peace. The force
of my feeling gives me direction. Let it be disease,
affliction, addiction; you are a habit I will pursue. No
surgeon can cut me free of you. If I am blind then I never
want to see. If this is rape then I declare that all
husbands, with their wedding night madness, are similarly
guilty. Thomas and Sally are one. In what language

[[Page H1324]]

does God require the marriage license? Is he satisfied to see
the vows written on men's hearts; or do only wedding gowns
and hypocritical ceremonies move him? Am I condemned because
of my oath of monogamy is unregistered? Is it some base
perversion that leads me to discern that nothing is more
delicious than fidelity?
(Sally emerges from the floor climbing up from the stairs
at the foot of Jefferson's bed. She is draped in a black
cloak on the upper part of her body but below the knees a
white night gown can be seen.)
Jefferson: (Throwing open his arms as he moves toward her.)
Ma Cherie! My magnificent flower!
Sally: (Leaping into his arms.) Like a baby rabbit racing
for its mother I came running. Please excuse me but my legs
leaped forward all on their own. I could not hold back one
minute more. I have waited so long for the lamp in the window
to light my way back to you.
Jefferson: Please forgive me. You have been humiliated for
the last time. I beg you! Forgive me! (Falls to his knees and
throws his arms around her legs.)
Sally: Mon Cher, please don't greet me on your knees. Don't
drown my mind in fancy pleas. Just squeeze me close. (He
rises and envelopes her in his arms.) Speak to me with the
strength in your hands and arms. I have been a lost orphan
without your love to surround me.
Jefferson: My Sweet Angel, look at Monticello. (Begins to
speak French.) C'est un chateau tres incomplete. Mais un
jour, je le finirai totalement. Monticello est ton chateau,
Sally. You will never be driven from your castle again. I
swear it to you, sweet Sally. You demand nothing but this is
my gift to you. No one, not even Martha, shall ever take
Monticello away from you again. I swear it!
Sally: Please do not swear again. I do not need another
oath. Make no promises except one.
Promise you will love me like the green grass grows. The
grass is forever.
Jefferson: I will love you forever, Sally. We are one. Now,
tell me that you forgive me. Promise that you will love me
forever.
Sally: Oh my sweet Cher, how can I answer you? I can't
match your basket of fancy words. Just look into my eyes and
real all of your answers. You see my pain. You alone know how
much I hurt. I can see the understanding in your eyes. The
heavy beating of your heart is sending me a message. As much
as I have missed you, you have missed me. You still Love me.
The election, your daughters, the planters, the guests;
nothing has been enough to block your path back to me. The
message is so simple, Mon Cher. You still love me. And I
promise to love you forever.
Jefferson: The world is as it is. Let the violent variables
swirl around us in chaos. You, sweet Angel, shall be my
constant. Everlasting you are mine!
Sally: You have recited enough of your sweet speeches
tonight. Take me to our bed. Your cold sheets are waiting to
be warmed. (Sally takes off her black cloak and stands in her
white nightgown before Jefferson carries her to the bed.)
In Act I, Scene 25, Jefferson is forced to justify his love
for Sally to his jealous daughter, Martha:
Martha: I did not like her. Perhaps I was jealous of every
female in your life. But Maria Cosway was an elegant lady.
Sally was nothing. You remade Sally. Why did you select
Sally?
Jefferson: An architect can read his own blueprint easily;
but it is not always possible for a man to decipher his soul.
Martha: You told her the right books to read in your
library. You coached her until she learned to speak French
better than me. You let her reign supreme over all the
servants. Sally was nothing but mud. But you diligently
molded her into your favorite statue.
Jefferson: To some degree maybe I did mold her. But God
alone could teach her to burst into a room like a morning
glory; to bloom as the reddest rose commanding every eye; to
stand as the sunflower in every crowd; to always be the lily
who lights up a dark pond of tears. Sally is what nature and
God and I have made together. And so is Patsy. You are
separate and distinct but blessed be the priceless two of
you. Sally extracts nothing from Patsy.
Martha: Why love, Father? Why not just let it be lust? The
South is littered with mulattos but white men don't treat
their mothers like wives.
Jefferson: Tonight, Patsy, I beg you to be my daughter. I
have only two of you. I have hundreds of inquisitors. Do not
insult me. Do not degrade me with conventional accusations.
If you have ears, then hear me. I need more than pleasure!
Watching loved ones die maims the spirit, cripples the soul;
even the strongest among us are never fully rehabilitated.
There is but one antidote to such despair and most men never
find her. Life and joy are for the living (pauses) but we
disabled souls require magnificent assistance. Sally is my
magnificent assistance. Inspiration is that which completes a
man; supplies drive and ambition; stimulates vision; absorbs
despair. She who inspires is sacred. Sally is sacred.
The fact that an aging Jefferson could not separate himself
from Sally raises questions less about sexual addiction and
more about the magic and magnetism of Sally Hemings. She
obviously had more than her beautiful body to offer. Why are
all records of Sally so thoroughly and meticulously missing?
In his seventies and eighties why did Jefferson still find
her company indispensable? Since her continued existence
posed an obvious embarrassing threat to Jefferson's heirs,
how did Sally manage to outwit them and survive? And is it
not obvious that both the father and the mother had to be
involved in the arrangements made for the big city survival
of their children who were allowed to ``run''? For a lifetime
Thomas and Sally did more than merely sleep together. But
what was it that made Sally ``sacred'' in the eyes of
Jefferson?
All traces of Sally Hemings have been scrubbed from
Jefferson's writings and from history. Fiction writers thus
have great latitude in the challenge to recreate this central
character. She may be glimpsed through her own speeches:
In Act I, Scene 16, on the day she learns of the public
charges that she is the President's mistress and the mother
of his children:
Sally: Marse Tom don't want to know what's happening here.
Marse Tom won't look down at the dirt. Marse Tom rather gaze
up at the skies. He always goes in person to buy slaves. But
you won't see him around when slaves are sold. But Marse Tom
is many men all squeezed into one. He is the owl and the
eagle, the fox and the sheep, rose and thorn, still pond and
flooding river. God was straining hard the day he made Marse
Tom . . . The closer you watch Marse Tom, the less you
understand him. I have seen him wave his hand at heaven and
thumb his nose at the angels. But some days he takes oaths
and swears under the watchful eyes of God. So much about him
stays in the dark. But why must we figure out the puzzle? Why
do you ask so many questions Millie? I just know in my bones
that Marse Tom is the grandest man that walks on this earth.
. . .
Preacher Zeke: They say Marse Tom could be pushed out of
office. They say nobody will vote for him a second time. This
is bad, Miss Sally. Look right there in the paper. They
called you a concubine!
Sally: Our love is right, Preacher. Your God, our Jesus
smiles down on Thomas and Sally. The newspapers are all wrong
and our love is right. He will not bend, Preacher. Marse Tom
will stand and fight.
Preacher Zeke: Chief Justice Marshall, Patrick Henry, John
Adams! They have all come out against Marse Tom.
Sally: You hear a hundred dirty puppies howling at the
heels of a mountain lion. My Master will never bow to them.
You watch, Preacher Zeke. Watch and see him strike with quiet
lightning. He will leave the puppies scattered across the
woods. He will stand in this storm. Pray to make him strong.
The God who gave me my love will not tease me and then take
him away. The Almighty who made me a slave would not torture
me twice. Pray the right prayer, Preacher. Make him like
David against Goliath; like Daniel in the lion's den; let him
be Samson. Give him the jawbone of an ass and let him beat
the Philistines down. For our love he will go up to the gates
of heaven and wrestle St. Peter himself. Pray, Preacher,
pray!
Millie: Preacher Zeke, do they put corcupines in jail?
Sally: Concubine, Millie? Not corcupine! The word is
concubine! Any woman that is used but not loved is a
concubine. Many waives are concubines. I am not a concu-
bine . . .
In Act I, Scene 24, Sally confronts Jefferson's daughter:
Martha: You are both reckless! Love has nothing to do with
it. My Father is first of all a man and men are prone to
allow their lust to place everything else in jeopardy.
Sally: Be careful what you label lust. Lust is an easy pig
to feed. Men can drop their pants anywhere. My love gives
life to him. He says that he can sometimes only heal his
headaches by placing his head in my hands. He calls me his
magic and his medicine. . . .
Martha: Yes, I hear you as a woman, tonight. But all these
years I have worked so hard to make you a thing. I could not
admit my Father had succumbed to a mere woman. You had to be
a soft, fuzzy, lustful creature that he took to bed to keep
himself warm; a witch to cure his manly madness; a slop jar
for his boiling male juices; a submissive sheep; a ravishing
werewolf; I made you anything in my mind but a woman. You
could not be human.
Sally: Not human, Martha? But we played together as girls.
We have lived for twenty-three years within each other
shadows. I am your mother's slave sister, her half sister.
The father of your mother was my father. You are my niece,
Martha.
Martha: Stop it! Don't remind me of the disgusting lust of
my maternal grandfather. Let me forget how our lives are
intermingled, miscegenated and tied together like insane
serpents.
Sally: Consider the serpents, Martha. In the Spring when
certain snakes mate, they wrap themselves around each other
with passion. And neither snake supplies the poison to ruin
their great hug. You come to the love feast with fangs,
Martha! You bring the poison!
Martha: Stop judging me! We are not as the gates of
heaven--and you are not St. Peter. You are not an angel
merely because you are a slave. Other women suffer too!
Sally: Yes, Martha, admit it. We are both women. But after
tonight we will never suffer together again. Thomas Jefferson
is your Father. I give him all to you. To take him from me,
day and night you tear at him with sharp hooks in his mind.
Every axe and dagger you use. Sometimes you dump a heavy

[[Page H1325]]

load of reminders about your mother. Sometimes you paint me
as a demon. I am unlawful, illegal, sinful, the Jezebel
dragging him down to hell. But your spray of poison has not
put out my Master's passion. Our love is like an iron rock
against all of your heavy hammers. I win the battles but you
keep fighting the war. You can not take him from me. No woman
can take him from me--no daughter, no Washington ladies with
all of their lace and lovely speeches. No ghost of a wife
long gone. You have all failed. You can not take him, He is
mine! And since he is all mine I have the power to give him
to you. (Begins to cry.) For his sake I give him to you. Take
your Father and let me go!
Martha: Sally, Father will be here soon. Perhaps you should
rest. You should not meet him with tears.
Sally: Take him! To get at me you are driving him mad. You
will split his soul right down the middle. Preacher Zeke
tells the story of two women before King Solomon both
claiming a baby. Like the real mother standing before Solomon
my love is bigger than yours. Your Father has been split in
half too long. Take him! He should not have to wake up each
day and choose between me and you. I am my own butcher. I
choose to cut him free. I want him made whole again. The
country still needs him undivided. I stand on one side and
all the world weighs down against me. So heavy a sin will
surely drag me to the bottom of hell. . . .
In Act I, Scene 26, declaring that she will leave
Monticello, Sally confronts Jefferson:
Jefferson: Liberty and freedom are necessary to guarantee
the opportunity to love. Around your waist in a pouch are the
papers that validate freedom for you and each child. You are
not my slave, Sally, You don't have to stay if you do not
love me.
Sally: In the dark you whisper over and over again that you
love me; at night I am your adored wife. But in the morning I
am again just a slave. At night I am everything. In the
morning I am nothing. Monticello you declared to be my castle
but when company comes I am the pussy cat who must crawl into
a corner or go hide in the bushes.
Jefferson: You stab with a long rusty knife!
Sally: Hear me til the sound of my voice makes you want to
puke. And then maybe you will never ever want to hear my
voice again.
Jefferson: You speak from great pain, Sally. I honor your
suffering.
Sally: To be a slave, night black or mulatto, is to live
always in pain. The days creep by so slowly for a slave--and
there is nothing to look forward to but more misery tomorrow.
If we slaves were wise we would punish all slave owners by
killing ourselves and destroying their property. If slaves
had a democratic government we would all go to the polls and
cast our ballots for a holiday of destruction; a grand day of
death. . . .
Jefferson: Forgive me, Sally. I have written in riddles and
traveled in evasive circles for too long. I swear I will
someday set these matters straight.
Sally: If you are truly my champion--and since you are the
powerful President of the United States, I most reverently
appeal to you to publicly whip the man who wrote these words
that I have copied from his book: (She reads from a piece of
paper.) ``Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but
no poetry; in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and
anomalous on. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by
the glands of the skins, which give them a very strong and
disagreeable odor''. . . .
Sally: And you will promise never to be mad at me for doing
what it was right to do. (Pause) I have a gift for you, Mon
Cher, a gift I bought in a Paris flea market. I bought this
from an old African who was selling carvings. He had a big
head and a face that could only have been chiseled by a very
strong angel. He was tall with big hands and long bony
fingers. (Pulls the cloth covering from a small black stone
carving.) See, it is a tiny family of a man, his wife and two
children--the way families must have been before the slave
catchers came. Take it! It was dreamed up by an inferior
``dull, tasteless'' black mind, and carved with inferior
black physical fingers. Take it and always remember that the
Sally you once adored was first of all a slave. I am Black
Sally!
Jefferson: Thank you Sally. But please do not remind me
that the trial is over.
Sally: I sentence you to one day write that any being able
to bear the daily burdens of slavery and still be able to
laugh and to love is surly superior to all other human
beings.
Jefferson: I swear that I shall truthfully instruct
posterity and work to shield them from the errors committed
by my generation.
Sally: Say no more. (Holds a finger up to her lip.)
Jefferson: As you wish, my divine inquisitor. The nobility
of Adam is best reflected by the fact that he made no attempt
to argue with his God. Adam quietly acknowledged his guilt
and he left the Garden of Eden. . . .
In Act I, Scene 27, Sally reverses her decision to run away
from Monticello:
Sally: I could take my children and live anywhere. I could
mop floors as a maid, or melt away in sweat cooking in some
lady's kitchen; or I would do well as a seamstress. I could
put plenty of food on my table for my children. Black Sally
could survive. But there would be no thread tough enough, no
needle big enough to sew up the aching hole in my heart.
Martha: I promise you peace Sally. I shall never again
harass or insult you. In no way will I ever block or handicap
you in your pursuit of happiness at Monticello.
Sally: The slave in me is beaten down and bitter, but I can
never be happy unless I stay hostage to my heart. Against the
hurricane of the heart the head is like a crippled fly. This
morning when I got out of bed I knew in my bones that I had
lost the battle. No woman can love him, be loved by him, and
them pick up and run away from Thomas Jefferson. It would
take an angel or some other being able to work miracles to
carry out such a deed. I'm only a woman. I love him. I can't
abandon him. (She takes up a pen and begins scribbling a
note.)
Martha: In the end we must always remember that we are only
women; incomplete and not fully made without our men.
Sally: We are women, and men are not fully finished until
we make them so.
In Act II, Scene 3, Sally comforts an old, sick and dying
Jefferson:
Jefferson: My dearest Magic Woman, now you are so kind as
to assign me another son when I have refused to claim the
sons you gave me.
Sally: I didn't come to talk about that. Your morning is
cloudy enough already. Accept Edward Coles as a son from you
soul and celebrate.
Jefferson: Why accept a son who publicly chides me and
privately mocks me with flattery.
Sally: Sons do sometimes rebel and challenge their fathers.
Jefferson: And sometimes children hate their fathers. I
have given ample cause to your Thomas and Harriet and Beverly
and Eston and Madison. Toward my own flesh I have behaved
abominably!
Sally: (Screaming) Stop it! The world is as it is. In a
great burst of love you gave my children life. And later you
gave them their freedom. I asked for nothing else. You must
not torture yourself! If my children have suffered it is
because they were abandoned by their mother who wouldn't
carry them all at once to freedom because she couldn't bear
to leave her lover.
Jefferson: My loud and powerful queen, I beg you not to
scream at this old man. My conscience is crammed with sins
that break out like blisters. Brains overloaded with living
and learning become grotesque. That I sometimes become
unhinged should not surprise you. Wrinkled hearts and musty
minds are not good company. Wise women do not waste their
love on old men.
Sally: (almost whispering) Then I never want to be a wise
woman. Let me die a fool! Loving an old man is like loving a
baby. It is the best used time of your life. No need to have
a reason. The love just swells up all inside you and then
runs over in a flood. (She kneels beside his chair and begins
to caress and kiss him). . . .
As much as he was the author of the Declaration of
Independence, the third President of the United States and
the purchaser of the Louisiana Territory, Thomas Jefferson
was also the concerned father of several children of African
descent. With unfortunate limitations and restraints the
evidence is that Jefferson loved his common-law wife and
children. He was not a brilliant, cold blooded beast. The
hypocrisy he felt compelled to perpetrate certainly created a
personal life wracked with intense conflicts.
Jefferson's public statements on race and slavery often
stand in opposition to his private passion and compassion;
however, when his intimate relationship with Sally is affixed
to selected public actions, it is clear that he consciously
made a vital contribution to the abolition of slavery. There
are many who contend that without Jefferson there could never
have been an emancipating Abraham Lincoln. Congressman
Jefferson attempted to halt the expansion of slavery into new
states and failed by one vote in the House of
Representatives. As President he narrowly won a victory for a
law that finally ended the legal importation of slaves. It is
also important to note that Jefferson's advocacy for the
rights of the common white man had to take roots before
Lincoln could fight the war that freed the slaves.
Jefferson was quoted by the slave mongers as well as the
Abolitionists as they made their cases. Until today he is
still cited by racists as well as progressives. The new DNA
clarification of his paternity of Sally Hemings' children may
finally end this ideological tug of war. In a superficial
response the racists may jettison the man who treated the
slave mother of his children as if she was his wife.
A more profound response from progressives in general, and
African Americans specifically, would be a new celebration of
Jefferson as the pre-requisite to Lincoln. It is a historical
fact that one of Jefferson's proteges, Edward Coles, took his
slaves from Virginia to Illinois where he gave them their
freedom and acres of land. Coles later became Governor of
Illinois; defeated a referendum seeking to make Illinois a
slave state; and was an active politician in Illinois at the
time of Lincoln's election and the Civil War. More than mere
words and ideas linked Lincoln to Jefferson.
Celebrations of the new Jefferson discoveries, and
expressions of gratitude to the science of genetics which
produced DNA testing are very much in order. What the
historians and researchers of several generations refused to
examine objectively has now been determined to be almost
certainly true. The white male southern academicians who have
dominated the interpretation of pre and post civil war
history have now been thoroughly discredited. Their refusal
to accept overwhelming evidence with respect to Jefferson,

[[Page H1326]]

of necessity, raises serious questions about the integrity of
the rest of their scholarship.
Some obvious indictments of these proponents of the
Confederate view of history are now in order: The
establishment historians are guilty of ignoring the record of
widespread miscegenation fostered by White men and its
implications. Mainstream scholars have refused to offer any
meaningful expositions of the ``breeding farm'' industry. On
the other hand post civil war terrorism and violence by the
defeated rebels has been glorified. ``The Birth Of A Nation''
interpretation has never been answered by academicians with a
true and thorough story of the terrorism, murder and mayhem
which returned the blacks of the South to a state of semi-
slavery.

____________________