Sally Hemings (2000) | Documentary

[Music] sally hemings a slave woman whose name will be forever linked to one of america's founding fathers when three-year-old sally hemmings arrived at monticello as part of an inheritance for thomas jefferson she could not have guessed the adventure her life would become but when we examine sally's life and the difficult choices she made we are forced to focus less on the possibility of a romantic relationship between man and woman and more on the disturbing dynamic between slave and master she was a mother she was a slave woman she was an african-american woman who did the best she could for her children she would have to find a way to live as best she could which tells me that she had to be a very strong woman the story of tom and sally is the longest running mini series or soap opera in american history how she felt about him who knows being owned is not exactly a desirable state of affairs they were together longer than some marriages exist yes i understand she was a slave but i also know that slaves did fall in love at some time with their masters jefferson is so symbolic of the contradictions in american history sally hemmings has been a symbol as well of the denial of african-american oral traditions the papers were covering it as if she were monica lewinsky was it a scandal of course it was do we look at it with new eyes i think we do [Music] in november 1998 a tantalizing mystery about the private life of thomas jefferson yielded to science shedding light on one of america's most complex and controversial presidents and his slave named sally hemings through a dna study scholars found that in all likelihood the author of the declaration of independence had a sexual relationship with hemings and fathered her children it was the weight of all of that evidence that led us to believe that there was likely a relationship between thomas jefferson and sally hemings this was front page news around the country but to the descendants of sally hemings who had passed it down for more than two centuries it was considered common knowledge the details of heming's life are sketchy even contradictory and the facts hard to pin down there are no photographs or drawings of her but from what is known sally lived a remarkable courageous life as a slave presidential mistress and mother the first hemmings to put sally's story into the public record was her son madison in 1873 the 68 year old madison dictated his memoirs to an ohio newspaper reporter the pike county republican decided they were going to do a series of stories that had to do with ex-slaves madison was one of the most well-known ex-slaves that lived in the community as a matter of fact all of his neighbors knew the story of what his purported lineage was for the first time sally heming's life was presented to the world the story of the woman who would become renowned as dusky sally began with her grandmother in west africa in the mid 1700s the young woman known as baya baya was rounded up with others and forced onto a slave ship [Music] baya bayan became a slave in america it was customary during that time that if you have a friend to visit you not only do you feed him his food and his drink it they also would offer you a bed partner this young girl the african girl was given to john hemmings sex with captain hemings produced a daughter betty the girl grew up as a slave on the tobacco plantation of a man named john wales in virginia betty would have a fate similar to her mother's john wells had been married several times and his wives had died he took her as his concubine and she bore six children for him one of their children sally was born in 1773. even though her father and three of her grandparents were white making her three quarters white sally hemmings was still considered black and a slave if you had a child and you were an enslaved woman then your children also became slaves and with that parents didn't have say over what would happen to their children when they grew up they would have to answer to someone else for the major events in their lives baby sally had a white half sister named martha from her master's first merit the year before sally was born martha had married a wealthy 29 year old revolutionary named thomas jefferson by all accounts thomas and martha were deeply in love the year after martha's marriage her father died she inherited betty hemmings and her children sally was just two years old when she moved to the jefferson's mountaintop estate monticello at monticello thomas jefferson listed betty and all her children in his farm records with their last name an early indication that sally would lead a life quite different from that of most slaves this is rare both at monticello and on other plantations a common method of referring to enslaved people is by referring to them by their first names only i think it's clear that the hemings family was different from other enslaved families at monticello the sort of up front and center slaves at cello were almost all hemmings almost all of them were very light-skinned some of them looked almost completely white it was a way in which jefferson in some sense concealed from others and perhaps even concealed from himself the reality of slavery by giving it a face that looked more acceptable special treatment however did not mean a life of leisure young sally like all slave girls went to work as soon as she was old enough young girls on southern plantations generally started helping out with child care from the age of about six if they were the children of house servants as sally hemmings was they might care for the young children of the plantation owner and this was probably the case for sally hemmings as she grew older her responsibilities would have increased and she would have gone into weaving and spinning learning how to make cloth and from there she would have been trained specifically to do a certain type of work sally did have one advantage that many slaves did not she was raised by her mother and grew up with her siblings [Music] one of the things that i think challenged many people was the whole idea that their children would grow up without knowing who they were i think that the important thing for someone like sally hemings would have been that she would have been part of a family sally was able to work side by side with all her brothers and sisters and perhaps her greatest influence her mother betty these years were busy ones for the master of the plantation as well long before he became president thomas jefferson was shaping the american revolution in june 1776 the 33 year old wrote the declaration of independence in philadelphia his first draft included a passage blaming england's king george iii for the slave trade and calling for its abolition jefferson recognized that slavery was incompatible with the values of the declaration of independence and incompatible with the values of the american revolution but he was trapped within that condition he himself a slave owner thomas jefferson was no different than the other men of his time yes he wrote the declaration of independence he said we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal they had the right to property my people were property the continental congress rejected jefferson's anti-slave passage as too controversial jefferson returned to monticello after the congress disbanded and served as governor of virginia for the duration of the revolutionary war [Music] sally hemmings and jefferson's other slaves maintained a steady rhythm of life while the fight for independence was raging around them [Music] not all was well at the plantation however in the main house martha jefferson had given birth to five children during the first nine years of her marriage only two daughters survived the strain of the pregnancies was devastating to martha's health weak and exhausted she gave birth to her sixth child lucy in 1782 then martha's body gave out tradition holds that on her deathbed martha gave this bell to nine-year-old sally thomas was at martha's side when his wife died at the age of 37. [Music] there's a story that was current in the enslaved community at monticello about a death bed promise that thomas jefferson made to his wife martha as she lay dying not to marry again jefferson was inconsolable for weeks but life at monticello carried on young sally continued to serve jefferson's daughters patsy polly and the newborn lucy [Music] the revolutionary war ended in triumph the following year but thomas jefferson was still depressed over his wife's death so in 1784 he accepted a post overseas he was overwhelmed with grief and in part he needed to flee the memories of martha at monticello and so he accepted a post as american minister in paris jefferson took with him his oldest daughter patsy and one slave sally's older brother james hemmings young sally who by some accounts bore a strong resemblance to her half-sister martha stayed behind [Music] after a few years she would join her brother and her master in paris and her life would be transformed [Music] in the mid 1780s the teenage sally hemmings had no way of knowing that she was about to be launched on a journey unlike that of any american slave her master thomas jefferson still in mourning for his wife martha had taken a post in france as the american ambassador his oldest daughter patsy was living with him along with sally's older brother james sally was sent to live with jefferson's younger daughters polly and lucy at their aunt and uncles virginia plantation sally's primary duty there was to wait on the two girls [Music] while jefferson was overseas he received heartbreaking news both his daughters had contracted whooping cough and two-year-old lucy had died jefferson became more and more anxious to have polly present with him in paris and wrote and said please make arrangements to send polly to me and france by the time polly's trip was finally arranged the middle-aged slave who was supposed to accompany her had fallen ill so 14 year old sally hemmings was sent in her place we assumed that sally hemmings was chosen to be polly's companion because she had been her companion through childhood and was considered her maid the two girls crossed the atlantic and arrived in london where they were met by the american ambassador john adams and his wife abigail adams was somewhat aghast because sally at this point would have been between 14 and 15. abigail adams to her horror saw this young girl who she thought was wholly unequipped to handle polly but nevertheless she had crossed the ocean with her and then made it there safely the original plan was to send paulie's companion back to virginia right away but with jefferson's approval the plan changed sally would stay in london with polly and move on with her to paris abigail adams did buy both of them clothes she outfitted sally and outfitted paulie so that they would be presentable in france i've always wondered why sally hemmings continued on you know across the ocean to london and then to france it does seem that sally hemmings was the one constant in polly jefferson's life at this time smallpox was a problem in europe so the first thing jefferson did upon sally's arrival in france was to have her inoculated that probably was a somewhat frightening procedure and you had to be quarantined for several weeks so she was probably taken somewhere outside of paris because that was the law at that time [Music] sally hemmings was now ready to embark on an adventure that most virginia girls much less slaves could only dream about living in paris [Music] paris in 1787 was a vibrant dynamic city exquisite architecture rose high above the streets in direct contrast to the revolutionary mood of the crowds below the 14 year old slave was deluged with new experiences and fresh ideas the whole experience must have been incredibly exciting for a young girl any young girl and certainly a person who had grown up on the plantation in virginia while she was there she was given it is believed by some historians some tutoring in the french language she also was given uh training as a ladies maid which meant not only was she taught to do the hair of the ladies in the fashion of the day but she was also taught to launder fine linens and clothing and then she was taught as a dressmaker in the highest order more importantly slavery did not exist in france while she was in paris of course she was free so sally was a slave that tasted freedom i think sally was able to see herself in a way that gave her a level of self-esteem that she probably never would have had had she remained at monticello sally's older brother james had come to paris with jefferson three years before to be trained in the art of french cooking james no doubt taught sally how to interact with the french servants in jefferson's household and helped her learn french customs and culture james was also being paid for his services soon so was sally as long as she stayed in france she was a free person and so she was paid as a servant would be however not as much but at least she experienced being paid for what you do sally also had the unique experience of living on her own when jefferson sent her to a boarding house for more than a month the owner of the house one madame dupray was the jefferson family laundress there's no reason to suppose that madame dupray would be acting as a slave master in in that role all these types of experiences go into making them and it's sort of not the equivalent of a grand tour but it would be something like that to find herself in the middle of paris in the middle of this very very opulent time and having a chance to live on her own jefferson's daughters patsy and polly who attended a convent school also introduced sally to other sides of parisian life we know very little directly about sally heming's duties in paris but we know that by the end of that time she was acting as ladies made to both polly and patsy jefferson some of paulie and patsy's classmates at the convent actually had their maids living there and it's not impossible that sally hammings might have spent some time at the convent [Music] sally's world broadened even more when patsy turned 17 and began to attend social functions with her father we assume that sally hemmings would have certainly prepared her for these outings but probably accompanied her on a number of them as well there are indications in the fact that jefferson suddenly began buying sally hemming's more clothing at the same time that he bought his daughter patsy more clothing there were letters that came to patsy from friends that she had in paris and in the letters they always mentioned sally sally seemed to be more a part of what was going on in patsy's life than she would have been at monticello it would also seem that ambassador jefferson was one of those who began to treat sally differently in paris in fact her son madison hemmings makes it quite clear in his memoirs that during that time my mother became mr jefferson's concubine the teenage slave from virginia had forged a completely new life in an exciting and foreign land soon sally hemmings would be forced to make a choice between the freedom of paris and returning to america with thomas jefferson [Music] in the late 1780s sally hemmings was a slave living in a country where slavery didn't exist she was living in the home of her master thomas jefferson the american ambassador the teenager was growing into a stunning young woman affectionately called dashing sally and described by others as handsome with long hair flowing down her back the relationship between jefferson and hemings probably started in the late 1780s when they were together in paris and she was about a 14 or 15 year old girl by 1788 the widow jefferson was waxing eloquently in letters about the domestic virtues of american women and life at home jefferson talks about women in his letters as the guardians of virtue in that family unit and a belief that the bucolic rural farming world of virginia is his real favorite and his ideal jefferson was homesick with his daughters away at school perhaps he found sally to be a link to the world he romanticized and yearned for in virginia but their relationship might not have been as romantic as their home in the city of lights suggests the debate now has been was it love or was it right and that in one sense is an unanswerable question i have always thought that there had to be some semblance of respect i don't know if love is too strong a word but that's something that held those two together it was probably in some sense of the term consensual meaning both parties agreed to it though it was clearly rooted in jefferson's power jefferson owned this woman and so to call it consensual between master and slave seems a bit of a contradiction jefferson may have been truly attracted to sally hemmings perhaps even loved her but that could not change her station in life i think that he had affections and feelings for sally i think he was probably very possessive about her as well but in the meantime it was okay for him to keep her family and her in a situation where they lived as house servants would live in the private time when no one's around and it's just the two of them of course now you have man and woman and how she felt about him who knows being owned is not exactly a desirable state of affairs he could break his promises at any time to her so she managed him very well i think in the paris of 1789 jefferson was enjoying his role as a patron saint an advisor as the masses stormed the bastille and launched the french revolution then his well-ordered world came crashing down patsy threatens to convert to catholicism as soon as he hears that he removes her from the convent and makes plans to return to virginia still jefferson had an even bigger problem according to madison heming's account sally hemmings was pregnant at the time and she didn't wish to return to virginia when jefferson and his daughters were returning the other thing that sally did while she was in paris was that she learned to bargain naturally she and especially her brother jamie did not want to return to the enslaved condition again jefferson convinced sally's brother james to return to america by promising to give him his freedom if he would stay home long enough to teach a replacement what he had learned of french cooking sally finally agreed to go home to monticello as well but not before striking her own deal thomas jefferson made extraordinary promises to her including the fact that her children would be freed at age 21. she took him at his word and a number of people say to me you know why would she trust him you know and that's a that's a very difficult question to answer but evidently she did and believed that he would do what he said [Music] the account of madison hemmings of jefferson's pledges to sally hemings suggest that she had some measure of control over her own life that there was some mutual trust between the two of them sally and james sailed back to virginia with jefferson in 1789. madison heming's memoirs state that soon after sally returned to monticello she gave birth to a child of whom thomas jefferson was the father it lived but a short time there's no record of this child in jefferson's records but he didn't have complete records of the slave population at this time was there a child we don't know whether it was a boy or a girl what the child's name was none of that is really known jefferson returned to a burgeoning political career while he was in europe the united states constitution had been written and adopted he was called on by president george washington to serve as the nation's first secretary of state jefferson divided his time between the capitol in new york and his beloved virginia on the mountaintop at monticello sally heming's life had also changed drastically sally hemmings had had all of these wonderful experiences while she was living as a free person in paris so when she gets back to monticello it's back to the drudgery of slavery there's something about being a slave that had to have torn a psyche down that self-esteem that she built up i just wonder how it had begun to collapse when she returned to monticello sally became pregnant again in 1795 during a period when jefferson was at home in virginia she gave birth to a daughter in october of that year but the girl died at the age of two [Music] in 1796 thomas jefferson ran for president but came in second to john adams in accordance with the constitution at that time jefferson became vice president the two men disagreed strongly about national policy a situation that quickly stirred up intrigue and backstabbing sally hemmings might have thought that she was far removed from the political wrangling but accounts of her relationship with thomas jefferson were about to become fodder for newspapers across the country [Music] by 1797 sally hemmings had been back from paris for eight years and had resumed her role as a slave at monticello her master vice president thomas jefferson was away much of the time plotting against his arts rival and boss president john adams yet in april 1798 25 year old sally gave birth to her first recorded son beverly a very striking pattern emerges from this comparison of this information in that of the six children born to sally hemings that we know of from jefferson's records all were conceived when jefferson was at monticello and several of them were conceived within three weeks of his return from an absence in philadelphia or washington [Music] sally's duties at monticello were comparatively light after her return from paris she took care of jefferson's chamber and wardrobe looked after the children and did some housework and sewing when sally realized what her fate in life was going to be when she returned to monticello as a slave it seems that sally pretty much lived for this promise that she was able to extract from thomas jefferson while she was in paris that her children would be freed at age 21. hemmings lived in several locations near the hilltop at monticello before she apparently settled into one of the servants rooms under the south terrace [Music] jefferson's daughter patsy now 27 watched over the plantation while her father was away 25 year old sally was obliged to follow patsy's orders regardless of her status as jefferson's mistress and the unspoken reality that sally was patsy's aunt she lived in a house with her half-sister's child in charge telling her what to do so it must have been a very difficult role for her to be she must have been a heck of a diplomat to be able to skate on this ice that was so thin if sally ever decided that she made a mistake leaving france and not taking her freedom what could she do about that nothing she would be stuck with her decision so it also put her in a situation that she would have to find a way to live as best she could based on what was available to her [Music] while sally hemmings tended to jefferson's home and the children the vice president spent most of his time in philadelphia embroiled in the struggles of the new american government the relationship between jefferson and hemmings made sense for jefferson he was a man obsessed with control it meant that he could devote the bulk of his other energies to his public career without the customary obligations of a husband he had an unexpected bonus he had martha's half-sister now having someone who's beautiful has a spirit and personality and and essence of this woman that you loved but also someone that you own gives you a situation where you can have your cake and eat it too he didn't have to be faithful to her and we have heard of no other woman during that tenure that occupied his interest at least publicly so we think that he was fascinated with her and that was quite a trick they were together longer than some marriages exist yes i understand she was a slave but i also know that slaves did fall in love at some time with their masters to say that there could be no feeling is to say that someone that is enslaved is not lovable to say that there could not have been feeling on the part of sally also says that a slave could not love [Music] whether it was love or just convenience their relationship would not remain private for long by 1799 a full-blown political war was raging in philadelphia vice president thomas jefferson had secretly enlisted a journalist named james calendar to attack his political enemies in particular president john adams criticism of government officials was illegal at the time under the sedition act and calendar ended up in jail his work didn't entirely tip the scales of victory in the next presidential election but jefferson did beat adams and jefferson was sworn in as the third president of the united states in march 1801. shortly afterwards calendar was released from jail he'd served a year in this really miserable jail and he suffered so he said okay i'd like to be the postmaster of richmond and please also pay my fine that i had to pay and i can't afford the 200 bucks and essentially jefferson has said uh you're too hot now goodbye and good luck calendar brooded for a year over this betrayal before he struck back in the way he knew best when jefferson didn't give him an appointment as postmaster richmond he turned against him and he used whatever was at his disposal sally hemmings was just a tool calendar had picked up enough evidence of jefferson's relationship with hemings to write an article about it in the richmond recorder he broke the story in september of 1802 of the woman he called dusky sally well the story exploded after he found out that she appeared white he stopped calling her that and referred to her as the african venus a series of articles explained that jefferson and hemings had begun a relationship in paris and that the pair had children calendar wrote it is well known that the man whom it delighted the people to honor keeps and for many years has kept as his concubine one of his slaves her name is sally newspapers across the country picked up the story as calendar knew the scandal in virginia was not so much that the plantation owner was making use sexually of a slave because that happened all the time it was that he treated her with respect jefferson himself never directly denied the allegation but his supporters did what they could not deny was that there was a slave at jefferson's home in virginia named sally and that her children bore an uncanny resemblance to the president of the united states the public was titillated but jefferson played the scandal perfectly he did things according to the rules of that game as long as he didn't take sally down to the church and say we're going to get married things were fine the story had no long-lasting effect on jefferson's presidency and in 1804 he won re-election by a landslide as for sally hemings no one knows if she had any reaction to the scandal or even saw the articles about herself there's been questions as to whether or not sally was littered or not what could she read and write i i questioned if she really did even if sally was literate she left no documents behind but almost 200 years later dna test would speak louder than any letter in her own hand ever could [Music] the jefferson hemming sex scandal was still circulating in the newspapers of 1805 but sally hemming's life at monticello maintained its normal pace the 35 year old gave birth to a son madison that year three years later another boy esten was born sally's master thomas jefferson was now 65 and starting to slow down his second term as president ended in 1809 and jefferson returned to monticello for good his oldest daughter patsy had moved in with her 11 children and jefferson loved his role as patriarch and doting grandfather it was a part he never played with hemming's children something that bothered sally's son madison a great deal in his memoirs he recalled that jefferson was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to us children we were the only children of his by a slave woman he was affectionate toward his white grandchildren jefferson never acknowledged his paternity of sally's children jefferson recognized that if he were to admit that he was the father this would have been politically disadvantageous very harmful to him at that time but even more important to jefferson was his own survival in the memory of posterity while jefferson wasn't affectionate to her children sally hemmings did achieve one important victory jefferson kept the promise he made to her in paris 30 years earlier in 1822 sally's older children beverly and harriet turned 21 and were noted in jefferson's farm book as runaways there were runaways periodically over the course of jefferson's life as a slave holder and he usually made an attempt to recover his escaped slaves and would expend considerable money to bring them back to monticello but not sally's children they were allowed to leave harriet was even given fifty dollars and put on a stagecoach noting them as runaways was an unofficial method of freeing them both passed as white later married and lived in white society jefferson's actions may have given them their freedom but it was their mother sally who traded her freedom for theirs and prepared them for life after slavery sally did give her children a head start in the world she certainly raised them to be hard working and skillful and literate she taught them a way to get around in the world [Music] on july 4th 1826 four years after freeing sally's children and 50 years to the day after signing the declaration of independence thomas jefferson died [Music] in jefferson's will he freed only five of his 130 slaves all were members of the heming's clan three were older men well past their prime the other two were 21 year old madison hemings and 18 year old aston not only did thomas jefferson free these two boys he also made a petition to the legislature to allow them to stay in the state of virginia the rule at that time was that if you're a freed slave and you stay in the state of virginia past the year you automatically could become enslaved again madison and esten hemmings did stay in virginia as free men but sally was not freed in jefferson's will he actually told his daughter to free sally after he had died so she did what's called giving her her time which was letting a slave go and not requiring that the slave be chased down and recaptured she could live away from monticello and she could live with her sons and live out her days as as a person who had freedom but not quite hemmings and her two sons moved to the town of charlottesville near monticello she lived in a house on west main street until she died at the age of 62 nine years after jefferson there is no record of where she was buried her sons moved to ohio after her death even though they could have passed into white society like their siblings they lived as black men later eston moved his family to wisconsin and into white society [Music] before the dna results the idea of thomas jefferson and sally hemming's relationship was widely discredited a slow accumulation of letters and documents over two centuries brought no definite answer and oral histories were often ignored the simple answer to why no one has paid attention to the hemings family history or any of the other slave histories up until now is racism i think that historians presumed because it's not written down and because it's oral history and because the oral history began with slaves that it can't be trusted [Music] jefferson is so symbolic symbolic of the contradictions in american history and society freedom and slavery and sally hemmings has been a symbol as well often of the denial of african-american oral traditions even of the african-american presence in 1998 science intervened new advances in dna testing allowed for a sort of historical paternity test researchers examined why chromosomes which are the same in all male members of any given family blood from eston heming's great great grandson was tested against that of several jefferson men to see if the y chromosomes matched the test was positive they were all genetic jeffersons taken together with all of the extensive historical evidence this piece of information tipped the balance it seems most probable that thomas jefferson was the father finally after all these years has gone by they're going to have to spend their time trying to disprove themselves rather than me when we look at our family the descendants of sally hemings and thomas jefferson we number probably anywhere from a thousand to fifteen hundred people the relationship between sally hemings and thomas jefferson might never be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and whether she loved jefferson or simply accepted her fate one thing is certain sally hemmings left a legacy to her children and the american people she was able to do in her lifetime what many other enslaved women wanted to do in theirs which was to leave their children a legacy of freedom it's not a bad thing to have a mixed heritage it's a wonderful thing if america could just see that in their own families and it's not about color it's about family and it's about loving and relating to people as people america herself was built on imperfect people trying to come together as one and they made so many mistakes along the way why do we assume now that those same people were perfect and we hope that we can give somebody a gift from our heritage to say it's okay to talk about it [Music] you

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Length: 44min 41sec (2681 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019