Sally Hemings is a name that is seldom seen in history books, yet one that forces many to confront our nation’s difficult past. Her story is often intertwined with American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson and is a testament to the inhumane treatment of enslaved African Americans, who were viewed as property and chattel and stripped of their bodily autonomy.
Hemings, a mixed woman enslaved by Jefferson on his Virginia plantation, Monticello, was born in 1773 in Charles City County, Virginia. She is believed to have given birth to at least six of his children, two of whom didn’t survive to adulthood. Historical records suggest that she was just 14 years old, roughly 30 years his junior, when the explicit relationship began and 16 when she was first pregnant with Jefferson’s child. It is also said that she is the half-sister of his late wife, Martha Jefferson, who passed away in 1782.
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Prior to the mid-17th century, a child’s freedom status was determined by their father’s race; however, that was reversed in 1662 when the General Assembly passed a law that said a child born to an enslaved woman would also be considered enslaved. This gave slave owners who were hungry for cheap labor the ability to significantly expand their workforce and maximize economic gain. It also reinforced the notion that enslaved people were less than human, with a Black woman’s worth being stripped away and chained to her ability to reproduce more workers.
The sexual exploitation of enslaved women was, unfortunately, a common practice during this period and was one that plagued Hemings’ family from generation to generation. She was the daughter of an enslaved woman and her owner, as well as five of her siblings. At least two of her siblings are believed to have also borne children to white men. The embodiment of strength itself, she would go on to fight for her children to have better lives without having to suffer through the same generational trauma that she, her mother and siblings and numerous others did.
The unequal power relationship between Jefferson and Hemings started in 1787, when he requested that she accompany his 8-year-old daughter Maria to Paris, France, as a domestic servant and maid in his household. During her time there, she lived at Jefferson’s residence, the Hôtel de Langeac, and received training to serve as a lady’s maid to Jefferson’s daughters—Maria and Martha. She learned French and was occasionally paid a monthly wage of twelve livres, equivalent to $2. It’s important to note that Hemings was also legally free when she was in France.
In 1789, she returned to Virginia with Jefferson but not after negotiating “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her future children. She refused to return with him otherwise.
Hemings’ children experienced freedom decades after the negotiation:
- Beverly and Harriet left Monticello in the early 1820s
- Madison and Eston were freed in Jefferson’s will and left Monticello in 1826
Sally was never legally emancipated and was unofficially freed by Jefferson’s daughter Martha after his passing.
“Though enslaved, Sally Hemings helped shape her life and the lives of her children, who got an almost 50-year head start on emancipation, escaping the system that had engulfed their ancestors and millions of others,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed. “Whatever we may feel about it today, this was important to her.”
To learn more about the remarkable story of Sally Hemings, click here.
