Excerpt from:
"SALLY HEMINGS AN AMERICAN SCANDAL:
The Struggle To Tell The Controversial True Story"
by Tina Andrews
BUT WAS IT LOVE?
"…History is but a lie agreed upon…"
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P
eople, upon hearing my take on the Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson relationship, always ask why an African American woman, would write a love story between a slave master and a slave. How could any affection have been possible between the owner of chattel and his disenfranchised chattel? Especially when conventional wisdom dictates--in fact demands--that every instance of miscegenation must be born of rape. My response is always, "It depends on the situation and the two people involved."
Any dramatization of this story is bound to be controversial no matter how it is characterized because stories dealing with interracial relationships frighten us. We are still afraid of genuine emotion between white folks and black folks. Even in this day and age we are still uncomfortable with affection between the races. We frown when we see an African American man sitting in a restaurant holding the hand of a white woman. Visions of O.J. tear at our psyche. We shake our heads at the sight of a white guy with his arm around a pretty black sister. We swear there's an ulterior motive or some purely sexual component. We've all heard the lines:
"It can't be love. It has to be lust."
"You know what they say about those hot-blooded Black women."
"It won't last."
"It's a phase."
"She's only in it for the money."
"He's only in it for the sex."
These relationships are like an accident on the freeway. No matter your sensibilities, you have to look at it and make some mental commentary. And somehow, you always want these relationships to end. Preferably badly. That would make the point not to ever engage in such a practice again. It's the line from West Side Story, "Stick to your own kind." We refuse to believe that we, as human beings, can actually interact, care, need, disagree, share, worship with, be intimate and most important, love someone who does not look like us-whose background doesn't jibe with ours. It doesn't fit into our neat, understandable, acceptably packaged precepts. But it happens every day. And it happened more than we care to acknowledge during that abominable period in America's history when African Americans were held in bondage slavery.
Sally Hemings has been called many things by Federalist slanderers of Thomas Jefferson, historians and die-hard Jefferson traditionalists. It pained me to read how a slave who could not alter her circumstances has been categorized by history. James Thompson Callender, the most villainous scandalmonger and betrayer of Jefferson, variously referred to Sally in his Richmond Recorder attacks as: "the Negro wench and her mulatto litter," "an African Venus," "a slut as common as the pavement," and as being a "mahogany colored charmer." Scathing songs and poems were written about her. She has been referred to as "Dusky Sally," "slave whore," "wanton woman," "black Aspasia," "Black Sally," and "black seraglio." And although Jefferson, too, was attacked by Federalist propagandists as trying to increase the population of Virginia with "mulatto offspring" and experimenting with "racial inbreeding," he was never referred to by these same Caucasian writers as a rapist or sexual abuser. No matter how poorly the Virginia gentry may have thought of Mr. Jefferson's behavior regarding his liaisons with slave women, they always stopped short of accusing him of abuse toward a human being. That was because Negroes were not considered human beings and slaves less than that. Slaves were chattel. Objects to be bartered. Things with no souls to be bought and sold. As long as Sally Hemings was a slave, as long as she was a black woman, no matter how much "Caucasian blood" was accorded her by geneticists, genealogists, historians, and oral histories, she would never ever be considered a woman of worth by the majority culture. Not then. Not now. Even as I sat recently at a meeting of the descendants of Thomas Jefferson through his daughters Martha and Maria, and the descendants of Thomas Jefferson through Sally Hemings, I personally witnessed the degree to which Sally has been denied her rightful place in the history of Thomas Jefferson.
While researching documents and source references for the miniseries, I discovered that a number of our illustrious former presidents had mistresses, e.g., Andrew Jackson, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, John F. Kennedy and William Jefferson Clinton. While Jimmy Carter may have acknowledged that he "lusted in his heart," Grover Cleveland actually admitted to having an illegitimate child. But none of them-other than Clinton-has suffered the scorn, indignation and ignominy from the puritanical right as did Thomas Jefferson in his relationship with Sally Hemings-a relationship though not adulterous-was interracial.
I read a passage in the appendix of Joseph J. Ellis' book, "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson," which struck me as ironic. "…Long before we learned about the sexual escapades of Presidents Kennedy or Clinton or, before them, Harding and Franklin Roosevelt, there was the story of Jefferson and Sally. Indeed the alleged liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings may be described as the longest running miniseries in American history…"
I found this passage interesting for two reasons. One, Professor Ellis, a noted historian and Jefferson biographer, had once denounced the relationship as out of character for Mr. Jefferson. But upon disclosure of the DNA evidence, Mr. Ellis became one of the first to publicly change his position and has been very vocal in defense of how the relationship may have been probable. In fact Mr. Ellis, in a November 9, 1998 article for U.S. News & World Report, wrote, "…Jefferson has always been Clinton's favorite Founding Father. Now, a sexually active, all-too-human Jefferson appears alongside his embattled protégé. It is as if Clinton had called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished presidential pedigree…"
And, two, I was the one who was finally writing and would produce that "…longest running miniseries in American history."
So many had tried to tell the story over the years. So many had been thwarted in their efforts. I was not aware of it until well after we were in production, but at one point in 1979 or 1980, CBS, under a different regime, had been serious about presenting a miniseries based on Barbara Chase-Riboud's fictional novel, "Sally Hemings." But a group of Jefferson historians, including Virginius Dabney and Dumas Malone among others, wrote letters of protest and made well-placed phone calls, and the project, for whatever reason, was ultimately shelved. Malone, who called the relationship "utterly impossible," told the Washington Post at the time, the miniseries "will be a mockery of history."
Other networks and movie studios also lost interest in the various scripts floating around Hollywood on the story when told advertiser support might be withdrawn. So the dreams of many good writers out there attempting to see their books, plays and screenplays of the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings imbroglio on film went unrealized.
Had I known, when first engaging in this subject matter, that my own quest would consume 16 years from page to stage, I may not have pursued it.
First and foremost, I am a dramatist-a screenwriter who uses all available information on a subject to craft a script. I am not a historian or a Jefferson biographer and the opinions I express in this book are mine alone. I do not represent any production company or network. But I felt compelled to write this book for several reasons. Though there were many who felt the miniseries should have had its primary emphasis on Jefferson and his political or scientific career, I was more interested in Sally Hemings' perspective-the disregarded perspective, the slave perspective, which meant the project would be primarily dealing with Jefferson's domestic life at Monticello.
Frankly, it is the illumination of the private Jefferson which makes people uneasy. We place our icons on very lofty pedestals indeed. We canonize them, glorify them and forget that they, like the rest of us mortals, have weaknesses, vulnerabilities and frailties--none of which makes them any less magnanimous, just human and, therefore, relatable. There is not one among us who would want the sexual aspects of our being to be explored and exploited for public consumption, but we have to acknowledge we have them. So, to assume that Mr. Jefferson was incapable of engaging in sexual activity is foolish presumption. His genius as an architect of the perfect republic and his primal urges were not mutually exclusive. They worked in tandem.
Second, even though the events upon which my screenplay is based are true, some may have felt the miniseries contained substantial historical inaccuracies. As a result, I realized many people are unfamiliar with the facts or are unaware of how much actual data was utilized in the miniseries. So, I want to share my research and source references to establish that there is an abundance of historical data or "dots to connect." I also want to show how I connected those dots in a structured and emotional way to create a compelling drama designed to hold an audience's attention for four hours.
Third, I want to share my personal odyssey of "finding, processing and producing the story"-which was exhaustive and taxing-so that people will understand what writers go through. Many times we must wrestle demons and traverse our own dark tunnels to emerge from the other side changed and more evolved as a result of the experience. This is what happened to me along this journey.
People are neither benign nor agnostic on the subject of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and my take on the subject would be fraught with controversy because it dealt with disquieting issues. Those of race, sex, blood, genes-and shame. I would also discover there was no "right" way to present such taboo subject matter without offending someone's sensibilities. Had I written it as 38 years of the rape of mother Africa, white Americans would have dismissed it as conjecture, racism and the continued demoralization of Virginia's "favorite son." Lovers of the third president simply cannot wrap their brains around the concept of his "alleged" miscegenation with a black woman, period, let alone his being sexually violent with her. And if I presented a love story, there would have been those to say "impossible" because it was morally reprehensible to even suggest that Jefferson could have a deep and abiding affection for a black woman, because, to them, white men cannot possibly love black women. It also had the potential of alienating African Americans for whom the subject of slavery has as an inviolable component numerous scenarios of the heinous abuse of black females. For most African Americans the "master/slave" relationship is inherently coercive and the question of miscegenation will always be the absolute and painful result of rape. Consequently, no rendition of the story other than abuse and sexual depravity will be tolerated. So where was the politically correct middle? I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn't.
Thus my dilemma.
In investigating the story, there is no question there were far more examples of sexual abuse against slave women by slave masters than the few isolated incidents of affection I discovered in the research. There was even evidence of this in my own family genealogy. But the Hemings/Jefferson liaison was leaning, for me, toward being one of those isolated incidents. Whenever I encountered bias it was always in keeping with the idea that the relationship had to be debauched if there was in fact a relationship at all. My attempt to understand and thus dramatize Thomas Jefferson was not an attempt to debase him, but rather to place him in some mortal context. It would be mythology to assume that because Mr. Jefferson was a white, wealthy, politically positioned aristocrat that he could not be sexually attracted to a woman of color. Whether he was besotted by Sally Hemings or simply took sexual pleasure in her was not as much the issue as the fact he indeed did sleep with her and had children with her no matter how their sexual arrangement is characterized. Conversely, can we deny Sally Hemings her right to a private life without representing her as a passive victim? Whether she was slave or free, she had her own private passions. Did she use Jefferson for personal gain? For the freedom of her children? For protection? Or did she in fact find in him a kindred spirit longing to simply love and be loved in return? So many of us place entirely too much politics behind the simplicity-of genuine affection.
So many questions burned at my soul as I embarked on this project and there will never be more important, more meaningful work to me than my work on "…American Scandal." In the end, I found that it was better to tell the story as I discovered it. By presenting the story as truthfully and with reverence to the deprecated Sally Hemings, I knew that the visual telling of this controversial story would resonate far beyond its airing for, ultimately, it is a story of America--and America's struggle with unfinished family business.
"…Daughters, who should have been the principal object of his domestic concern, had the mortification to see illegitimate mulatto sisters, and brothers, enjoying the same privileges of parental affection with themselves. Alas! Mr. Jefferson, did not your philosophy teach you the impropriety of such proceedings?…Why have you not married some worthy woman of your own complexion…"
Richmond Recorder, November 3, 1802
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"…Information assures us that Mr. Jefferson's Sally and their children are real persons. And that the woman herself has a room to herself at Monticello in the character of seamstress to the family, if not as housekeeper… but her intimacy with her master is well known, and on that account she is treated by the rest of his house as one much above the level of his other servants. Her son, whom Calendar calls president Tom, we are assured, bears a strong likeness to Mr. Jefferson."
Richmond Recorder, December 8, 1802
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