The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy

by Robert F Turner

  I would add that, as with so many other areas, Jefferson’s contribution in America’s earliest struggle against terrorists was tremendous. He argued over many years with his friend John Adams about the need for a navy so the new nation could protect its commerce from the Barbary Pirates; but Adams’ more pragmatic approach—that it was cheaper to pay tribute than to raise a navy, and that the states of Europe would not think less of America for doing precisely what the Europeans were already doing—prevailed during our nation’s first dozen years.

  But, at his first cabinet meeting after being elected President, Jefferson (with the unanimous support of his cabinet) decided to order two-thirds of the new American navy to sail to the Mediterranean with orders to sink and burn pirate ships at will if they learned that the Bey of Tripoli had, as expected, declared war against America for not increasing its annual tribute. For two centuries the European powers had been paying tribute, but Jefferson’s successful defense of American rights on the high seas led ultimately to an assertion by European states of their own rights and to an end to the reign of terror of the Barbary Pirates.3

  Thomas Jefferson has indeed left us a great legacy for which all Americans should be in his debt. I believe the work of the Scholars Commission in helping to establish the truth in the Jefferson-Hemings controversy is all the more important in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

  The Press Conference

  Several members of the Scholars Commission gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 2001—the day before Thomas Jefferson’s 258th birthday—to distribute copies of our report and answer questions from media representatives. Attendance at the press conference exceeded our expectations, especially after we learned that a few blocks away at the White House President George W. Bush was hosting an event for descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. There were allegations that people in the White House had confirmed that the last-minute event was arranged at the suggestion of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and speculation that the timing (celebrating Jefferson’s birthday a day early4) had been planned to draw attention away from the release of our report.5

  Whatever the explanation, as it turned out the White House event almost certainly increased the attention paid to our report. Many journalists could not resist the temptation to combine the stories, often complete with a photograph of a smiling President Bush meeting with descendants of Sally Hemings, and noting that just as this was taking place a group of prominent scholars a few blocks away was casting serious doubt upon the Hemingses’ claim.6

  It may also have been a slow news day, for the following day the story was covered in almost every major American daily newspaper7—several with page-one coverage—and in countless local papers as well based upon AP, UPI, or other news service accounts. As we had hoped, several editorials making reference to our report also appeared.8 And like the original 1802 allegations, the Scholars Commission report crossed the Atlantic and was publicized in prominent European newspapers.9

  The report also received extensive coverage on CNN, beginning Thursday evening and continuing through much of Friday. National Public Radio (NPR) ran the story, Bryant Gumbel mentioned it on Friday morning’s CBS News Early Show, and stories were carried as well on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and Fox News.

  In the months that followed, there were other encouraging signs that our efforts had produced positive results. Just before our report was released, American Heritage ran a story suggesting that the DNA tests had ended the debate over a Jefferson-Hemings affair. But early the following year, the editors noted the conclusions of our report and asserted: “it’s important for the public to realize that the purported Jefferson-Hemings liaison remains a disputed possibility, not an established fact.”10

  The influence of the Scholars Commission report was also evident on several Web sites identified by searching “Jefferson Hemings.” A biography of Sally Hemings on u-s-history.com, for example, noted:

  An article in Nature (November 5, 1998) reported that DNA samples taken from Jefferson descendants was [sic] compared with Hemings’ descendants and concluded that Jefferson may have fathered one of Sally Hemings’ sons.

  Later research casts doubt on the earlier findings and notes that other Jefferson relatives lived in close proximity to the Monticello household and one could have been the father of the child or children in question.

  Perhaps a more accurately state [sic] question is, “Which Jefferson fathered the Hemings children?”11

  A 2002 Google search of the Internet for “Jefferson Hemings” produced forty-five pages of Web listings, beginning with the primary link to the Scholars Commission report. Ignoring links that pre-dated the release of our report, fewer than one-third of the first two-dozen sites presented the allegation of a Jefferson-Hemings sexual relationship as established fact, and most ranged from doubtful to very doubtful.

  Not everyone learned of our study, and not all who did found it persuasive. Indeed, some groups that should have known better still seemed ignorant of the basic findings of the 1998 DNA tests, which proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Thomas Woodson could not have been the child of Thomas Jefferson.12 For example, the American Library Association in 2001 listed Byron W. Woodson’s A President in the Family as an “Editor’s Choice,” and the following year listed it as among the top-ten African-American nonfiction books.13 After appearing on a public television program with Mr. Woodson, I politely asked him how he dealt with the DNA evidence pointing against his claim. He explained (correctly) that there was no known DNA sample from Thomas Jefferson, and reasoned: “perhaps he was illegitimate.” The one thing that he seemed certain about was that his family oral tradition was more probative of the truth than any DNA tests.

  I have not seen any scientific polling of public perceptions on the Jefferson-Hemings issue following our report. A month after the report was released, however, I attended portions of a reunion of my law school class, and one of the attorneys at my dinner table remarked that he had seen my name in his local paper in connection with our inquiry. Most of the people at the table—working in various locations across the United States—were at least aware that the story had recently been called into serious question by some new report or evidence. It was hardly a sufficient sample to draw scientific conclusions, but I was nevertheless encouraged by the response.

  The Monticello Association Vote

  In 1913, descendants of Thomas Jefferson’s daughters Martha and Maria created a family organization known as the “Monticello Association” (MA) to celebrate their heritage, promote the reputation and fame of Thomas Jefferson, and provide for the maintenance of the family graveyard at Monticello, which was deeded to the descendants of Jefferson’s daughters. Even before the DNA tests became public, descendants of Thomas Woodson had sought admission to the group and permission to be buried in the graveyard. Publication of the Nature14 report on the DNA tests led to demands by not only Woodson descendants, but also those of Madison and Eston Hemings, for admission to the family group; and the family’s failure to immediately grant admission was criticized by many—including some family members—as evidence of racial bigotry.

  At its 1999 annual meeting, the MA welcomed fifty-five Hemings family members to their annual meeting in Charlottesville as “guests,” while appointing a Membership Advisory Committee (MAC) to examine the facts and make a recommendation on granting them full membership. Dr. Eugene Foster, who had organized the DNA tests and co-authored one of the Nature articles, addressed the group. Based upon conversations with MA members, there was media speculation that the Hemingses would soon be admitted.15 Many MA members were shocked by the new DNA evidence, but most seemed anxious to “do the right thing” and the relatively small faction that openly refused to accept the Hemingses’ claim was treated coolly by most of the family. At the 2000 annual meeting, Dianne Swann-Wright and Lucia Stanton—the principal authors of the Monticello Report released earlier that year—a
ddressed the group, as did the Monticello committee’s sole dissenting voice, Dr. White McKenzie Wallenborn. Many observers expected the family to vote formally to accept Hemings applicants into membership at the meeting scheduled for May 2001.

  Word that the Scholars Commission would be releasing a report on the subject in April 2001 led to a decision to delay the vote on admitting the Hemingses until the 2002 annual MA meeting. Knowing that the MA (along with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society) had a special interest in the issue, when our summary report (pages 3–21 of this volume) was completed I e-mailed copies simultaneously to the heads of all three organizations at the end of the first week in April. I was invited to make a presentation to the Monticello Association annual meeting the following month, at which time I received a courteous reception. Based upon the questions from the audience—including several from Hemings family members present as guests—and comments made to me before I left the hotel, I had no idea how the family would vote on the issue. Early the following year, the MAC recommended that the Hemings descendants not be admitted to full membership but that an umbrella organization be created to promote further interaction between the Jeffersons and Hemingses/Woodsons. The issue of full membership in the MA could be revisited if additional evidence was found in the future supporting their claim.

  I was invited to attend portions of the May 2002 MA annual meeting as a guest, in part on the theory that questions about our report or the facts of the case might arise on which I might be able to shed some light. To provide for a full exchange of views, a large meeting hall away from the hotel where the group was meeting was reserved for a public discussion of the issue. There was a good deal of back and forth by both sides, although most of the speakers seemed to come from what might be described as the “paternity-belief” camp.

  What struck me the most about the comments, however, was that the nature of the argument had dramatically changed. Rather than alleging that the DNA tests had resolved the issue, that Jefferson had freed all of Sally’s children at the age of twenty-one and otherwise given her special treatment unlike that given to any other slaves, and the like, there was very little substantive rhetoric in favor of admission. As the meeting progressed, the emotions increased. Several members of the Woodson family announced that their strong “oral history” was more persuasive than the DNA tests, and a common theme was that anyone who opposed their admission was a racist. This, in turn, understandably offended some of the descendants of Martha and Maria Jefferson (who, I sensed, felt they had been very civil to the Hemingses for the previous two years), and the debate became even more rancorous. When one MA member made reference to the Scholars Commission report, an angry Woodson family member shouted that it was “funded by the KKK.” Someone else said that it had been “refuted” by a recent issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (which will be discussed below), but there was little substantive debate on the merits and I heard no specific attempt to challenge a single one of our factual conclusions. However, several Hemings family members and supporters made it clear that if the family voted against admission they would immediately rush to tell the assembled media that the vote was motivated by racial bigotry—an approach that did little to calm the growing anger on both sides of the debate.

  I was surprised by the margin of the subsequent 67-to-5 vote against admitting the Hemings and Woodson applicants to membership. Ironically, this 93% margin was within one percent of the 12-to-1 (92.3%) margin by which the Scholars Commission concluded that the story of a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was probably not true. Even more surprising was the nearly four-to-one margin by which the proposal for an umbrella organization was rejected—which I attributed largely to the strong emotions obviously felt by many Jefferson descendants in response to the allegation that they were motivated by racism. Immediately following the first vote, many of the Woodsons, Hemingses, and their supporters within the MA rushed out of the room to announce the decision to the media and denounce those who voted with the majority as bigots. The obvious anger apparent in the remarks of several Jefferson descendants who tried to counter the charges in front of the TV cameras certainly contributed further to the perception by many in the media that the vote was founded in racism. From my perspective, however, it appeared to be motivated instead by an understandable displeasure that, after years of welcoming the Hemings descendants as guests and examining the facts in great detail, they were being repaid by what appeared to be almost a blackmail scheme. The clear message of many of the Woodson and Hemings guests was, whatever the facts, vote to admit us now or you will be denounced as racists. I could not help but note the irony that the original allegation published two hundred years earlier by James Callender had also been part of a blackmail scheme.16

  The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello)

  Perhaps the most difficult group to understand in this controversy has been the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF, known as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation [TJMF] until 2000), which following the DNA studies became one of the strongest champions of the paternity story. As discussed in the original chapters to my Individual Views in this report, the Foundation’s in-house “Research Committee” produced a seriously flawed report in January 2000 that one of its members asserted seemed to have been written to support a position already arrived at by Monticello leaders. Many of the errors found in Professor Annette Gordon-Reed’s Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings are repeated in the Monticello Report, including a quotation from the altered transcription of a letter from Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Randolph Coolidge.17

  When I first met with TJF President Daniel Jordan after being appointed chairman of the Scholars Commission in mid-2000, he seemed anxious to cooperate fully with our inquiry and expressed high praise for the scholars who had agreed to take part in the inquiry—with a single exception, who subsequently withdrew from the project before the report was completed.18 I was more than fully satisfied with the cooperation I received throughout our inquiry both from Dr. Jordan and his senior research staff. But in taking groups of visitors on Monticello tours in 2000 and early 2001, I sensed a dramatic shift in focus and indeed a hostility by some guides towards Jefferson that I had never seen before during numerous visits over several decades to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

  My impressions were reinforced by several current and former Monticello guides who contacted me and reported that guides who questioned the official TJF position affirming the high probability that Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’ children were being threatened with dismissal. The dropping of the name “Memorial” from the Foundation’s name was reinforced by reports that guides were told that the Foundation was “no longer in the business of memorializing Thomas Jefferson.”

  I was also confused and surprised when I was told that, shortly after being notified of the date and time of our press conference, TJF officials had reportedly contacted the White House and promoted an “early” birthday celebration bringing Jefferson and Hemings descendants together for a photo opportunity with the President.19 The allegation made no sense to me. Even if Monticello scholars had found the DNA evidence persuasive, surely they would welcome a new scholarly inquiry—all the more so after they learned that our findings might be expected to restore some of the luster to Thomas Jefferson’s public image.

  In addition to simultaneously e-mailing an advance copy of our summary report to the leaders of the TJF, the MA, and the TJHS, I offered all three groups an advance copy of our full report as soon as it could be reproduced.20 Dr. Jordan courteously thanked me for the offer, but explained that the TJF Board of Directors would be meeting during the week of our press conference and planning for the annual commemoration of Jefferson’s birthday would leave no time for anyone to review our report in advance.21 Four days after the Washington press conference, I arranged for a copy of our full report to be hand-delivered to Monticello for Dr. Jordan. The following day, Apr
il 17, 2001, I received an e-mail from Dr. Jordan confirming receipt of the report and saying “we look forward to giving it a close reading.”22 Two days later, Dr. Jordan requested additional copies of the report in a message that began: “The press of daily business has kept us from reviewing your large report in detail. … ”23

  Since no one at Monticello would have even seen our full report until the week following our press conference, I assumed that any press inquiries to Monticello in connection with the initial release of our report would be met with a general statement—perhaps noting that TJF scholars had not yet had an opportunity to read the full report, but that they welcomed new scholarship on the issue and looked forward to reading it. Instead, press accounts published the day after our press conference (several days before the first copy of the full report was delivered to Monticello) produced a dismissive response.

  A UPI story filed a few hours after our press conference on April 12 reported:

  Daniel Jordan, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Charlottesville, Va., said the study does not offer any new information, but simply reexamines the existing data from another perspective.