Last fall, I finally went to Monticello.

I moved to Virginia from Texas in summer 2022 and slowly started getting to know my new state. I focused most specifically on my new home: Fredericksburg, where I served as the inaugural Curator of African American History. I’ve now been here three years, long enough to experience the rhythm of the seasons and the ebb and flow of my beloved local river, the Rappahannock, long enough to fully immerse myself in Virginia’s unique history.

I’ve been avoiding visiting Monticello. Jefferson inspires in me a particular rage, an anger and hurt somehow exponentially greater than what I feel for any other enslaver. His intelligence, his curiosity, his love of learning, his writing, his singularity—I understand why people admire him so much. But his genius is what makes his participation in and attachment to the institution of enslavement so much worse for me. And, of course, his clear understanding of the value, creativity, expertise, and beauty of Blackness in the form of the Hemings siblings on whom he so relied, while he proliferated horrifying ideas about Black people.

The mansion at Monticello in November 2024. Photograph by author.

I’m no Jefferson scholar. My graduate advisor had studied him, specifically, and I learned a little about him from her. I’ve explored some of his work and examined his correspondence, especially with the Marquis de Lafayette, about whom I recently curated an exhibition. But the vast majority of my knowledge of Jefferson comes from the man himself, in the form of his notorious Notes on the State of Virginia.

I’ve read through them several times. And each time, his passages on Blackness and Black people fill me with a kind of pulsing anger I rarely experience. I’m a gentle person—I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to provide care for my community and approach every person I encounter with kindness and compassion. So my rage at the Notes is a bit out of character, although I maintain that it is fully justified.

I don’t share my opinion on Jefferson widely, for a host of reasons. One, I live in Virginia, his home state, and people here REALLY love him. Two, I understand his impact on our democracy, on the formation of our country, and I respect some of the legacies he left, especially the Statute for Religious Freedom he drafted right here in my beloved Fredericksburg. And three, whenever I’ve shared my dislike of our third president, people get intensely defensive. They point to all the amazing ideas he contributed, his leadership, his ingenuity, his role in expanding the borders of our nation with the Louisiana Purchase. They try to argue me out of my own emotions, urging me to look past his errors in order to recognize his impact.

I do recognize it, but I also believe I can hold my own opinion. That my physical response to the deeply hurtful things he believed about people who look like me, about me, is valid. Here’s what he said, in part:

“Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.”

“They seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.”

And, perhaps most insulting:

“Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry . . . Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.”^[1]

As tempted as I am to respond to his contentions one by one, the absurdity of his statements speaks for itself. The point of including them here is merely to establish the root of my dislike. And yes, I’ve considered the various arguments absolving him of responsibility for his own words: He was a man of his time and he well understood slavery’s horrors, even offering a plan for gradual emancipation elsewhere in the Notes. However, if we can honor and understand the importance of his other writings, including the Declaration of Independence, then so too must we honor and recognize the deeply racist ideas he published and disseminated from his position as a highly influential political and knowledge leader.

Anyway, for these reasons and many others, I avoided visiting Jefferson’s fabled home for the first several years of my time in Virginia. But in late 2024, I decided I was ready. And now I’d like to share my experience, as a Black woman originally from California, living in Fredericksburg, working as a curator and public historian specializing in the history of slavery.

I didn’t break down. But I did get very sad, and perhaps most interestingly, I became obsessed with Sally Hemings, outside of and in addition to her relationship with her enslaver.

My first impression was: cold. I’ve been reading about Monticello for so long, from Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton’s foundational study on staff and visitor responses to interpretation of slavery at the site in the 2006 anthology Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (New York, 2006), to Ana Lucia Araujo’s chapter covering the site’s 2012 exhibition Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello, to Clint Smith’s musings on the Slavery at Monticello tour and the Getting Word oral history project, formerly led by Niya Bates.[2] I’ve spent significant time with Annette Gordon-Reed’s groundbreaking scholarship on the Hemings family, and one of my favorite recent publications is Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s My Monticello (New York, 2021), which I was thrilled to see for sale in the museum’s gift shop.[3] All of which is to say: I knew Jefferson made his home on top of a hill overlooking Charlottesville, but I was unprepared for the amount of wind and cold air that touring an estate so situated would entail.

I shivered and looked out over Jefferson’s domain and thought about how cold and isolated and terrifying it must have been to be enslaved here.

We purchased tickets to the “Highlights” tour, which was fine. Our guide mentioned slavery several times, but the emphasis remained on Jefferson’s genius, his inventions, his specimens, his wine collection. I chuckled when she explained that he’d forgotten Saturday in his fancy wall clock, and thus had to cut a hole in the floor to accommodate it, and drooled over the beautiful library with its sunny windows and gorgeous French writing desk. Nothing horrifying happened, but all I could think as we walked from room to room was: Who gets to be a genius? Who gets to be comfortable? Who gets to create, unencumbered? The answer at Monticello was always Jefferson; but as a scholar, a writer, and an empathetic human, I couldn’t help but wonder about all of the incredible inventions and collections and art that Black people have made and could’ve made if we were all given access to Jefferson’s level of wealth, comfort, and space to think.

Our guide talked about Sally Hemings too, but only briefly. She acknowledged the DNA tests that proved Jefferson’s paternity of Sally’s children, and focused specifically on their time in France, emphasizing Sally’s decision to return to Virginia despite her chance at freedom in Europe. This also was mentioned on a panel outside The Life of Sally Hemings exhibit displayed in the room where she lived in the early nineteenth century, underneath the house on the South Terrace.

I didn’t expect to be so affected by her. I know the stories well, and I’ve always accepted her importance while not feeling particularly drawn to her as a person. That changed at Monticello.

I wanted to know everything about her. The panels provided all the information currently available: her birth into slavery in 1773, her family life and upbringing, her children with Jefferson, her late life in Charlottesville before her death in 1835. One panel tackled the word “concubine,” referencing the language Madison Hemings (Sally and Jefferson’s son) used to describe both Sally and her mother, Elizabeth: “In Sally Heming’s lifetime, the word ‘concubine’ defined a woman who had sexual contact with a man to whom she was not married. A concubine had no legal or social standing, and her offspring could not inherit from their father.” I bristled at the term, even while I understood the reasons for its inclusion.

I was most disappointed when I stepped inside the room itself. The stark, barebones room contains only a mannequin dressed in plain cream and gray eighteenth century garb, enclosed in a corner by a brown partition. I didn’t see any text about the outfit itself: whether the clothes were based on anything Hemings might have actually worn, if they were original textiles or re-creations (which seems more likely), or if they were meant to connote a particular status or hierarchy. Soon, a video began, projected across the back wall of the room.^[4]

The Life of Sally Hemings exhibit. Photograph by author.

The words “Recollections of Sally Hemings: drawn from the words of her son Madison Hemings” appear first, then “Selected excerpts from Madison Hemings in ‘Life Among the Lowly’ published in the Pike County Republican, Ohio, 13 March 1873.”

I loved that it starts with her son, speaking of his mother in his own words. I love that it actually says where the recollections came from, so people can consult the original source on their own, if they so choose. But I didn’t like what came next. A map highlighting North America and the northeastern tip of France, accompanied by the words, “In 1787, Thomas Jefferson sent for his younger daughter Maria to join him in Paris.”

A video entitled “The Life of Sally Hemings” should not begin with her enslaver, though it becomes obvious this video is actually “The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.” She is not and should not be defined by her relationship; the video should begin with her, from her point of view, and then segue into the ways Jefferson’s choices dictated her life.

The film continues. It talks about how she was chosen by his relatives to accompany Maria, that Sally was 13 or 14 years old, and that she remained in France for 2.5 years. It then immediately jumps to the “choice” she made, from Madison’s memory: “He desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him but she demurred.”

A projection appears on the mannequin, red florals transforming into pale lavender lilies, as Madison continues. “She was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free.” White birds flap their wings as the vegetation spreads across the screen.

“While if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him.”

At this point I am begging for context, for interpretation, for anything to help people understand this non-choice. This child was sent to France alone. She was in a foreign country where, as Madison indicates, she did not know the language (“just beginning to understand the French language well”), and her only nearby family was her brother, James, who was training as a French chef, leaving, I am positive, very little time to support or comfort her. She knew no one, except her enslavers, and, as we now know, she was already pregnant at the time of this “conversation.” Her “choice” was to remain in a foreign country, by herself, with a newborn, at the age of 15, away from her entire family, with no money, no place to stay, and, unclear, but likely unable to read or write. To call it a choice is to misunderstand a desperate precarity, despite whatever tiny measure of leverage France’s freedom laws might have afforded her.

I don’t want to remove her agency. She was clearly smart and adept and knew that this was her chance to negotiate. As the film progresses, “To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years.” The room comes alive with the movement of wings, perhaps to connote a chance at flight.

“In consequence of his promises, on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia.”

The projection fades, replaced by black and the stark white words: “Soon after their arrival, she gave birth to a child, of whom Thomas Jefferson was the father. It lived but a short time.” The understanding settled over me, the death of her first child before the age of 16, atop this cold mountain, the horrific realization dawning, possibly in this very room. The fear, the pain, the isolation. I hope that her mother was with her, that she received the care she needed. Where was he, I wonder? Did he hold her hand? Did he visit? Was he disappointed? What did they say to one another, in the wake? I recognize that this kind of loss was common, that many women from this era lost many children, that the percentage of offspring that lived to adulthood was significantly smaller than the babies conceived or born. But that does not prevent her grief or dilute her experience, nor does it reduce my own sympathy for her, my imagined ancestor.

A silhouette appears, a thin woman with head bowed, hands wrapped around her distended torso, an unsubtle illusion. I’m sure many find it compelling, and I hope it results in the empathy from viewers it is so clearly meant to provoke.

The silhouette moves, replaced by a warm yellow spotlight, then a child appears in the arms of the figure, and they swivel as she kisses and holds him close, accompanied by the words, “She gave birth to four others, and Jefferson was the father of all of them.” Again, I appreciate Madison’s determination to name Jefferson, but the juxtaposition between the playful female figure with her son and the sentence naming only the enslaver/father, completely absent from the neighboring tableau, makes me deeply uncomfortable. This is not a happy, loving family. This is something deep and dark and confusing and maybe, perhaps, sometimes, affectionate, but a happy, loving family is not possible between a middle-aged, famous, former president enslaver and the teenage girl he kept in bondage and impregnated, over and over and over again.

More children appear, following her around the room. She adjusts her daughter’s braid, her sons practice violin, she bounces a toddler on her hip while caressing the other three ,and their names fade in as the figures fade out: “Their names were Beverly, Harriet, Madison (myself), and Eston—three sons and one daughter.”

Cursive handwriting emerges, the names of the children first and then an entire sheet materializes. Each letter of the title surfaces, one by one. “Roll of Negroes. 1810. Monticello.” This is subtle and effective; their position as his children did not prohibit their inclusion on his list of property, and Madison’s next statement bolsters the claim: “He 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.”

Now I see the figure differently. She gave her children what he refused: love, care, access to creativity. I appreciate this reading, though I am not sure every visitor would understand the argument being conveyed.

More figures are projected onto the mannequin. Spinning wheels are shown as Madison details the work he and his siblings were assigned. His words are clear: We were enslaved and made to labor as enslaved people, despite our paternity.

Madison shares that “we were always permitted to be with our mother,” and then, finally, we come back to Sally: “It was her duty . . . up to the time of father’s death, to take care of his chamber and wardrobe, look after us children and do such light work as sewing.”

So much is hidden between these brief lines. She remained enslaved, and was required to labor for the same man with whom she shared all of these children. The mention of his “chamber and wardrobe” connotes a deep, forced intimacy that I react to with a shiver, and the term “light work” makes me grimace. Sewing, yes, but also having sex with him in the same room she was forcibly compelled to keep clean.

Madison wraps up as the lights brighten: “We all became free agreeably to the treaty entered into by our parents before we were born. We all married and have raised families.” Black birds surface on the mannequin as the silhouette returns, a burst of wings as they take flight and the light fades again, before the conclusion: “Jefferson owned 607 people over the course of his lifetime. He freed only seven, and let three others leave Monticello.”

Finally, finally, we finish with Sally: “Sally Hemings was ‘given her time’ after Jefferson’s death, but never legally freed.” What does “given her time” mean? “She died in Charlottesville in 1836. The location of her grave is unknown.”

I sat through the video twice. I felt deeply uncomfortable and disappointed, but I couldn’t yet articulate why. I read the panels outside the room again, and joined my friends, and we had coffee and explored the rest of the site, and visited the newly installed Contemplative Site, where I did cry a little, and learned about the incredible talent of Sally’s brothers, James and John, and looked at the reconstructed cabins on Mulberry Row. I drove back to Fredericksburg in what can only be described as a very confusing emotional fog. I wasn’t devastated like I’d anticipated, I wasn’t even angry, I was just baffled and extremely, murkily, sad.

Monticello’s Contemplative Site, dedicated in June 2023. Photograph by author.

It took me several days of walking around my life with the Monticello moments wandering across my mind and then I finally figured it out. The problem, and my solution.

The problem was that I couldn’t find her there. Sally Hemings. The essence of this incredibly famous, deeply influential person just felt . . . absent. I understand why, that there is so little about her in the archival record, that the staff at Monticello just aren’t able to access her the way they can access him. They are clear about this too; the first panel outside her room states unequivocally: “Sally Hemings left no written accounts, a common consequence of enslavement. Jefferson’s plantation records and her son Madison’s reminiscences are the most important sources about her life.” The second panel features a large red question mark with accompanying text: “What did Sally Hemings look like? Sally Hemings’s appearance is described by only two individuals who knew her” and quotes from Isaac (Granger) Jefferson in 1847, an enslaved blacksmith, and Jefferson’s grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

The phrase “a common consequence of enslavement” gave me pause: Why didn’t Jefferson teach her? He chose to educate her brothers enough for them to become leaders in their respective trades, and he clearly spent significant time with her. My guess is that her gender combined with the work he assigned her, which would not have been enhanced by her literacy, made him deem it unnecessary. But my queries only expanded. Why didn’t anyone else teach her, including her own family members? Did she actually know how to write, and were her letters purposefully destroyed? My brain started producing conspiracy theories as my endless questions about her remained unaddressed.

I couldn’t find any information about the creation of the film, about who wrote or directed it, or the staff involved in the project. I heard from an acquaintance that the museum’s community of descendants served as advisors, which should be mentioned in the room itself. I found an article about the opening of the exhibit, including a quote from a Monticello employee about the film’s intentions: “What we are attempting to do with these exhibits, specifically in this space with Sally Hemings is to humanize her, share her story, her agency, and to help people to connect with the truth of our complicated past around American slavery.” I acknowledge that the fact of the exhibition itself, and the other work recently undertaken to expand interpretation of enslavement at the site, constitute real progress. It is important and exciting that the institution has committed to including Sally and her siblings so openly. But in my opinion, it is far from enough.

I came up with my own answer to the problem of Sally’s interpretation at Monticello. Let Black women at her. Let them fully take over that room. Let us invent and create and dream, let us use the archive to supplement our knowledge, let us surround her with context and love and care and see what emerges. Hire Black women artists to visualize her, ask Black women scholars to imagine her, let Black female musicians compose for her. Give her to us and let us show you who we imagine her to be.

I thought of all the Black women whose work might serve as a model: Carrie Mae Weems’s From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, wherein she appropriated racist images taken by a white photographer to offer “a voice to a subject that historically has had no voice.”^[5] Azie Dungey, whose hilarious webseries Ask a Slave mocks the disturbing interactions to which she was subjected while employed as a living history interpreter of an enslaved woman. Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, a graphic novel written by Rebecca Hall, who embedded her own experience of the archive into historically informed imaginings of Black women’s role in rebellions and uprisings.^[6] The kinds of interpretation I envision for Sally require inventiveness and ingenuity, acknowledging the dearth of information available in the documentary record but expansive in their creativity.

There is even a tradition of Black women’s intellectual work related to Monticello! Annette Gordon-Reed followed Madison Heming’s oral history thread to the DNA proof of Jefferson’s paternity, Niya Bates prioritized descendant communities as she directed the Getting Word African American Oral History Project, and as mentioned, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson dreamt of a dystopian future where Hemings heirs remake the plantation as their own. There is a long legacy of Black women assembling answers from crumbs, reading between lines to write entire new narratives, creating tapestries of past and present and future to ensure our own collective survival. This incredible body of relevant work feels neglected from the site’s current iteration, but offers infinite possibilities.

I didn’t find Sally at Monticello. I recognize that some might be able to access her there in ways that I did not. But I invite the institution to consider spending some time and money, hiring some Black women cultural producers, and giving them freedom to envision this woman who deserves so much more than an empty room. It is not hyperbole to say that we need her.

Endnotes

^[1] Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/jefferson/jefferson.html.

[2] Ana Lucia Araujo, Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021).

[3] Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton, 2008).

^[4] The video is available online, so you can see it for yourself (though the digital version doesn’t capture the feeling in the actual room, with its physical connection to the woman herself): https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/.

^[5] Sophia A. Nelson, “New Monticello Exhibit Takes a Closer Look at Sally Hemings, Slavery, and the Healing Power of Truth,” NBC News, July 1, 2018: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/new-monticello-exhibit-takes-closer-look-sally-hemings-slavery-healing-ncna888136.

^[6] “Carrie Mae Weems From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried 1995-96, MoMA.org, accessed Sept. 9, 2025: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/45579; “Ask a Slave: The Web Series,” AskASlave.com, accessed Sept. 9, 2025: http://www.askaslave.com/home.html; Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts ( New York, 2022).