Sally
Hemings
1773-1835
Thomas Jefferson's concubine.
As soon as the Founding Fathers started splitting into factions, the
political rivals of Thomas Jefferson latched onto rumors that he had
fathered multiple
children on one of his slave girls. Serious historians, however,
refused to believe such vile slander. They declared that Jefferson
would never take advantage of a girl who was in no position to say no.
And that's where it stood for a couple of hundred years until a few
years ago
when geneticists figured out how to read DNA. Then we learned that, yes,
it was all true. Knocking up slaves was a fine Virginia tradition. Not
only did Sally bear several of TJ's children, Sally herself was the
daughter of her mother's enslaver. And her mother was the daughter of a
slave and a sea captain named Hemings. This made Sally a quadroon in
the parlance of the day. Her children by Jefferson therefore were
octaroons who passed as white as soon as they were set free and allowed
to start afresh in new communities.
Note on the illustration: No one today knows what Sally looked
like. Acquaintances later described
her as good-looking, black-haired and light-skinned, almost Caucasian. Her
father
was her mother's enslaver, who was also (through legitimate channels) the father of
TJ's wife, whom Sally was said to resemble. Unfortunately we don't
have any pictures of Mrs. Jefferson to copy and paste into Sally's AI face.