Slave's kin to attend Jefferson family reunion

The Associated Press

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Guess who is coming to dinner at the Thomas Jefferson family reunion this year?For the first time, descendants of Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings will attend the annual gathering, which has been held at Monticello for the past 86 years. But a battle looms over whether the Hemingses will be fully accepted as Jefferson's kin.

The reunion will be the first one held since DNA test results last fall found that the author of the Declaration of Independence may have fathered at least one of Hemings'children. Because of those findings, a white, sixth-generation scion of Jefferson plans to challenge his cousins to formally admit the Hemings' descendants into their family organization, the Monticello Association, during their private meeting May 16. "I don't see what the big deal is unless the big deal is racism," said Lucian K. Truscott IV, a best-selling author and member of the Monticello Association. "They take my word that I'm a descendant and they don't take their word, despite the oral histories and DNA tests that back their claim. That's racist on its face." "Yes, it looks racist, but it's a genealogical question," Monticello Association President Robert Gillespie countered. "We've got historical records. We need to go over some gaps in their genealogy." The genetic tests prove not that Jefferson was the father but that a member of the Jefferson male line fathered a Hemings' son. That leaves open the possibility that Jefferson's brother, Randolph, or one of Randolph's six sons, fathered a Hemings' child. Historians are using records of the whereabouts of the Jeffersons at the time of Hemings' pregnancies to determine paternity. "We're not ready to say yes, but we're definitely not saying no," said Gillespie, a lawyer from Richmond. Last fall, Truscott urged Hemings descendants to crash the reunion. Last week, the Monticello Association sent the descendants invitations to the reunion dinner, which will be at a historic tavern May 15, and a tour of Monticello, Jefferson's home. Truscott said Thursday that 34 members of the Hemings family are coming. Truscott and some of the Hemings descendants said that a vote to unite Jefferson's presumed white and black descendants would help heal racial rifts in America. It was Jefferson who wrote that "all men are created equal" yet he owned slaves and ignored accusations that he fathered a biracial child. The story of Jefferson and his slave had been passed down orally through the Hemings' generations. Hemings was said to have become Jefferson's lover when he was ambassador to France in the late 1780s. In an interview in 1873, Hemings' son Madison claimed Jefferson was his father. William Dalton, a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Madison Hemings, said he is coming to the reunion so the Jefferson family can see what he sees every time he looks in the mirror and every time he looks at Jefferson's profile on the nickel. "Here's a good chance to heal a multicolored family," Dalton said. "If they accept us as family, they will show America we can get along and it's not about color."

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