Jefferson DNA data
| Thomas Jefferson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 3rd President of the United States | |
|
In office March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1809 |
|
| Vice President |
Aaron Burr George Clinton |
| Preceded by | John Adams |
| Succeeded by | James Madison |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
April 13, 1743 Shadwell, Colony of Virginia |
| Died | July 4, 1826 (aged 83) Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic-Republican |
The Jefferson–Hemings controversy is a historical debate over whether a sexual relationship between U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and his multiracial slave, Sally Hemings resulted in his fathering some or all of her six recorded children. For more than 150 years, most historians denied rumors from Jefferson's presidency that he had a slave concubine, and said that one of his nephews had been the father of Hemings' children. Jefferson biographer Joseph J. Ellis said, "The alleged liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings may be described as the longest-running miniseries in American history."
Beginning in 1953, new documentation was published related to this issue, and some historians studied it seriously. In her bestselling 1974 biography of Jefferson, Fawn M. Brodie suggested he had been the father of Hemings' children. The book was widely discussed and Jefferson historians began to lose control of the narrative. While mainstream historians criticized the biography for its psychological analysis, Brodie also published her conclusions about the liaison, as well as interviews with descendants of Jefferson's mixed-race children, in American Heritage magazine, reaching a wider audience.
In 1979 Barbara Chase-Riboud published a well-received and bestselling novel on Hemings that gave her a "compelling" voice, portraying her as both an independent woman and Jefferson's concubine. Jefferson historians succeeded in suppressing a planned CBS TV movie based on this novel. In 1995 the film Jefferson in Paris was released, which portrayed a Jefferson-Hemings liaison.
In 1997 the issue was rejoined when Annette Gordon-Reed published a challenging analysis of the historiography on this issue, deconstructing previous versions and detailing oversights and bias. That year Ken Burns released his documentary on Jefferson as a PBS series. In discussions of the potential liaison, white historians gave all the reasons why it was unlikely Jefferson had one. African-American historian John Hope Franklin (and others) noted all the mulattos of the period and said, "These things [interracial liaisons] were part of the natural landscape in Virginia, and Mr. Jefferson was as likely as any others to have done this because it's in character with the times—and indeed, with him, who believed in exploiting these people that he controlled completely."
...
Wikipedia