Sunday, January 29, 2012 5:07:11 AM
New exhibit explores Jefferson's slave ownership
Nineteenth century bilboes for a child, front, and an adult, typically found on slave ships, are displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History new exhibit: “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, at the museum in Washington.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Shannon Lanier points to the pictures on the cover of the book Jefferson's Children, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, at a new exhibit: “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty”. Lanier is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
By BRETT ZONGKER (Associated Press)
Published: January 25, 2012 5:15 PM
WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" to declare U.S. independence from Britain, yet he was also a lifelong slave owner who freed only nine of his more than 600 slaves during his lifetime.
That contradiction between ideals and reality is at the center of a new exhibit opening Friday as the Smithsonian Institution continues developing a national black history museum. It offers a look at Jefferson's Monticello plantation in Virginia through the lives of six slave families and artifacts unearthed from where they lived.
The exhibit, "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty," was developed with Monticello and will be on view at the National Museum of American History through mid-October. It includes a look at the family of Sally Hemings, a slave. Most historians now believe she had an intimate relationship with the third president and that he fathered her children.
Museum Director Lonnie Bunch said his staff can test ideas by building exhibits before the National Museum of African American History and Culture is finished.
It will be the first museum added to the National Mall since 2004. A groundbreaking is planned for Feb. 22, and it's scheduled to open in 2015 near the Washington Monument.
Bunch said museum officials want to see how the public responds to subjects, such as slavery, as they try to present history for the widest possible audience.
Slavery, he said, is still the "last great unmentionable" in public discourse but central in shaping American history.
"This is a story we know we have to tell, and this is a story we know is going to be difficult and going to be challenging, but this new museum has to tell the story," he told The Associated Press. "In many ways, the Smithsonian is the great legitimizer, so if we can wrestle with slavery and Jefferson, other people can."
A portion of the exhibit devoted to the Hemings-Jefferson story marks the first time the subject has been presented on the National Mall.
Curators stopped short of making a definitive statement in the exhibit about the relationship, but they wrote that it was likely an intimate one, based on documentary and genetic evidence.
"On the one hand it's not a breakthrough for scholars. We've known this for a long time," Bunch said. "I think that the public is still trying to understand it."
Many artifacts, including tools and kitchen ceramics, are on public view for the first time, exploring the work and lives of slave families who lived on Jefferson's plantation. Among the pieces on display is a hand-crafted chair built by John Hemings, Sally Hemings' brother, to replicate a set of French chairs at Monticello.
While such items may have been seen by 450,000 people a year at Monticello, they are accessible to millions of visitors at the Smithsonian, curators said.
In the exhibit, oral histories from descendants of Jefferson's slaves reveal stories passed down through families for generations, along with detailed records kept by Jefferson.
For example, Jefferson bought George and Ursula Granger and their sons as slaves in 1773, and Ursula became a "favorite housewoman" of his wife. Jefferson eventually made George Granger the overseer of Monticello, the only slave to rise to that position and receive an annual wage.
Later, the first baby born in the White House was the son of Wormley and Ursula Hughes, who belonged to Jefferson.
"We can begin to understand slavery, not as an abstraction but through the stories of individuals and families who were surviving within a system that denied their humanity," said Leslie Green Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that runs Monticello.
A related website will showcase the "Getting Word" oral history project.
Curators also explore the importance of slavery in early U.S. history and Jefferson's views on enslavement, which he called an "abominable crime."
The small laptop portable desk he used to draft the Declaration of Independence is placed front and center in the exhibit, borrowed from the Smithsonian's permanent presidential gallery.
Shannon Lanier, 32, of New York City, a ninth generation descendant of Jefferson and Hemings through their son Madison Hemings, said he has known about his ancestors for years from stories told by his mother and grandmother.
Having such an exhibit at the Smithsonian is a breakthrough, he said, because it's past time for more people to know about Jefferson's history with slavery.
"This is a great catalyst for conversation," he said, standing near a bronze statue of Jefferson. "It's really hard for people to understand slavery and Thomas Jefferson. He was a president, why couldn't he set them free?"
"This helps enlighten people about ... how complex it was."
Bill Webb of New York City learned only in 2006 that his ancestor Brown Colbert was a slave connected to Monticello as the grandson of Elizabeth Hemings, Sally Hemings' mother -- a discovery he called "mind blowing."
"On any research that you do, I think it's exciting. But with slavery, it's certainly disturbing sometimes," he said. "But it's fact. It's good to know from whence one comes."
As for Jefferson, Webb said he was "a product of his time."
Until the mid-1980s, Monticello avoided the difficult topic of slavery. But decades of research and archaeology at the site, along with an oral history project begun in 1993 with descendants of slaves, helped piece together a fuller picture of slave life, said Monticello Curator Elizabeth Chew.
"Twenty years ago, we could not have done this show," she said.
Smithsonian Curator Rex Ellis said understanding Jefferson's place in history requires a deeper understanding of his entanglement with 607 enslaved men, women and children.
"We have to give voice to them," Ellis said. "They represent the community who brought him to his father on a pillow when he was born to those who adjusted the pillow under his head when he died."
*
On the web:
National Museum of African American History and Culture
http://nmaahc.si.edu/
Monticello
http://www.monticello.org/
*
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-exhibit-explores-jefferson-s-slave-ownership-1.3479534 [with comment]
===
Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founders' Slave-Owning History
A person portraying a blacksmith inspects a "slave" during a re-enactment of a mid-19th century slave auction in St. Louis, Missouri on Jan. 15. Such portrayals of U.S. history have become heated with recent pushes in states like Tennessee and Texas to overhaul how it is taught.
Trymaine Lee
First Posted: 01/23/2012 4:08 pm Updated: 01/23/2012 5:26 pm
A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/education/21textbooks.html ] to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners.
According to reports [ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/13/founding_fathers_tennessee_tea_party/singleton/ ], Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."
"The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at," Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal [ http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/13/tea-parties-cite-legislative-demands/ ].
During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, "Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government."
And that further teaching would also include that "the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy."
The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."
The latest push comes a year after the Texas Board of Education approved revisions to its social studies curriculum that would put a conservative twist on history through revised textbooks and teaching standards.
The Texas revisions include the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery, lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state [ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/social-studies-standards-debate/texas-school-board-fights-church-state-separation/ ] were voted down [ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/state-board-of-education/sboe-votes-down-church-state-wall-in-history-books/ ] by the conservative cadre. Among other controversial amendments that have been approved is the study of the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action.
The board approved more than 100 amendments affecting social studies, economics and history classes for Texas's 4.8 million students.
The influence of the amended textbooks will likely reach far beyond the state of Texas. The state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks, and many other states adopt Texas's books and standards.
The curriculum changes were pushed through by a majority bloc of conservative Republicans on the Texas school board, who have said the changes were made to add balance to what they believe was a left-leaning and already-skewed reflection of American history.
"There is some method to the madness besides vindicating white privilege and making white students feel as though they are superior and privileged and that that it is the natural order of things," Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State NAACP, told The Crisis magazine last year about this time. "The agenda being pushed and the ultimate impact intended is to make young people automatically identify with one political party."
A number of groups, including the NAACP, the Texas League of United Latin American Citizens and the Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education have joined forces [ http://texasnaacp.org/?tag=text-books ] to beat back the measures, which they said would have a negative impact on minority children.
The groups sought a federal review of the state's public education and have raised claims that the Texas State Board of Education has violated federal civil rights laws. In a formal complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education, the groups charge that the new curriculum was devised to "discriminate."
The measures went as far as to replace instances of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with "Atlantic triangular trade [ http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Slave-trade-would-become-Atlantic-triangular-trade-under-new-proposals-94506319.html ]."
"It is going to be extremely psychologically harmful to African-American young people because they are marginalized in the curriculum," Bledsoe said. "It will require them to be taught things such as the benevolence of slavery and the problems with affirmative action rather than the good and the bad."
"They voted down a motion that requires students to be taught about the terrorism brought about by the Ku Klux Klan and what they did to ethnic and racial minorities, but they turn around and pass a provision that requires the teaching of the violence of the Black Panther Party."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/tea-party-tennessee-textbooks-slavery_n_1224157.html [with comments]
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Nineteenth century bilboes for a child, front, and an adult, typically found on slave ships, are displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History new exhibit: “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, at the museum in Washington.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Shannon Lanier points to the pictures on the cover of the book Jefferson's Children, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, at a new exhibit: “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty”. Lanier is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
By BRETT ZONGKER (Associated Press)
Published: January 25, 2012 5:15 PM
WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" to declare U.S. independence from Britain, yet he was also a lifelong slave owner who freed only nine of his more than 600 slaves during his lifetime.
That contradiction between ideals and reality is at the center of a new exhibit opening Friday as the Smithsonian Institution continues developing a national black history museum. It offers a look at Jefferson's Monticello plantation in Virginia through the lives of six slave families and artifacts unearthed from where they lived.
The exhibit, "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty," was developed with Monticello and will be on view at the National Museum of American History through mid-October. It includes a look at the family of Sally Hemings, a slave. Most historians now believe she had an intimate relationship with the third president and that he fathered her children.
Museum Director Lonnie Bunch said his staff can test ideas by building exhibits before the National Museum of African American History and Culture is finished.
It will be the first museum added to the National Mall since 2004. A groundbreaking is planned for Feb. 22, and it's scheduled to open in 2015 near the Washington Monument.
Bunch said museum officials want to see how the public responds to subjects, such as slavery, as they try to present history for the widest possible audience.
Slavery, he said, is still the "last great unmentionable" in public discourse but central in shaping American history.
"This is a story we know we have to tell, and this is a story we know is going to be difficult and going to be challenging, but this new museum has to tell the story," he told The Associated Press. "In many ways, the Smithsonian is the great legitimizer, so if we can wrestle with slavery and Jefferson, other people can."
A portion of the exhibit devoted to the Hemings-Jefferson story marks the first time the subject has been presented on the National Mall.
Curators stopped short of making a definitive statement in the exhibit about the relationship, but they wrote that it was likely an intimate one, based on documentary and genetic evidence.
"On the one hand it's not a breakthrough for scholars. We've known this for a long time," Bunch said. "I think that the public is still trying to understand it."
Many artifacts, including tools and kitchen ceramics, are on public view for the first time, exploring the work and lives of slave families who lived on Jefferson's plantation. Among the pieces on display is a hand-crafted chair built by John Hemings, Sally Hemings' brother, to replicate a set of French chairs at Monticello.
While such items may have been seen by 450,000 people a year at Monticello, they are accessible to millions of visitors at the Smithsonian, curators said.
In the exhibit, oral histories from descendants of Jefferson's slaves reveal stories passed down through families for generations, along with detailed records kept by Jefferson.
For example, Jefferson bought George and Ursula Granger and their sons as slaves in 1773, and Ursula became a "favorite housewoman" of his wife. Jefferson eventually made George Granger the overseer of Monticello, the only slave to rise to that position and receive an annual wage.
Later, the first baby born in the White House was the son of Wormley and Ursula Hughes, who belonged to Jefferson.
"We can begin to understand slavery, not as an abstraction but through the stories of individuals and families who were surviving within a system that denied their humanity," said Leslie Green Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that runs Monticello.
A related website will showcase the "Getting Word" oral history project.
Curators also explore the importance of slavery in early U.S. history and Jefferson's views on enslavement, which he called an "abominable crime."
The small laptop portable desk he used to draft the Declaration of Independence is placed front and center in the exhibit, borrowed from the Smithsonian's permanent presidential gallery.
Shannon Lanier, 32, of New York City, a ninth generation descendant of Jefferson and Hemings through their son Madison Hemings, said he has known about his ancestors for years from stories told by his mother and grandmother.
Having such an exhibit at the Smithsonian is a breakthrough, he said, because it's past time for more people to know about Jefferson's history with slavery.
"This is a great catalyst for conversation," he said, standing near a bronze statue of Jefferson. "It's really hard for people to understand slavery and Thomas Jefferson. He was a president, why couldn't he set them free?"
"This helps enlighten people about ... how complex it was."
Bill Webb of New York City learned only in 2006 that his ancestor Brown Colbert was a slave connected to Monticello as the grandson of Elizabeth Hemings, Sally Hemings' mother -- a discovery he called "mind blowing."
"On any research that you do, I think it's exciting. But with slavery, it's certainly disturbing sometimes," he said. "But it's fact. It's good to know from whence one comes."
As for Jefferson, Webb said he was "a product of his time."
Until the mid-1980s, Monticello avoided the difficult topic of slavery. But decades of research and archaeology at the site, along with an oral history project begun in 1993 with descendants of slaves, helped piece together a fuller picture of slave life, said Monticello Curator Elizabeth Chew.
"Twenty years ago, we could not have done this show," she said.
Smithsonian Curator Rex Ellis said understanding Jefferson's place in history requires a deeper understanding of his entanglement with 607 enslaved men, women and children.
"We have to give voice to them," Ellis said. "They represent the community who brought him to his father on a pillow when he was born to those who adjusted the pillow under his head when he died."
*
On the web:
National Museum of African American History and Culture
http://nmaahc.si.edu/
Monticello
http://www.monticello.org/
*
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-exhibit-explores-jefferson-s-slave-ownership-1.3479534 [with comment]
===
Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founders' Slave-Owning History
A person portraying a blacksmith inspects a "slave" during a re-enactment of a mid-19th century slave auction in St. Louis, Missouri on Jan. 15. Such portrayals of U.S. history have become heated with recent pushes in states like Tennessee and Texas to overhaul how it is taught.
Trymaine Lee
First Posted: 01/23/2012 4:08 pm Updated: 01/23/2012 5:26 pm
A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/education/21textbooks.html ] to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners.
According to reports [ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/13/founding_fathers_tennessee_tea_party/singleton/ ], Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."
"The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at," Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal [ http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/13/tea-parties-cite-legislative-demands/ ].
During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, "Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government."
And that further teaching would also include that "the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy."
The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."
The latest push comes a year after the Texas Board of Education approved revisions to its social studies curriculum that would put a conservative twist on history through revised textbooks and teaching standards.
The Texas revisions include the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery, lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state [ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/social-studies-standards-debate/texas-school-board-fights-church-state-separation/ ] were voted down [ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/state-board-of-education/sboe-votes-down-church-state-wall-in-history-books/ ] by the conservative cadre. Among other controversial amendments that have been approved is the study of the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action.
The board approved more than 100 amendments affecting social studies, economics and history classes for Texas's 4.8 million students.
The influence of the amended textbooks will likely reach far beyond the state of Texas. The state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks, and many other states adopt Texas's books and standards.
The curriculum changes were pushed through by a majority bloc of conservative Republicans on the Texas school board, who have said the changes were made to add balance to what they believe was a left-leaning and already-skewed reflection of American history.
"There is some method to the madness besides vindicating white privilege and making white students feel as though they are superior and privileged and that that it is the natural order of things," Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State NAACP, told The Crisis magazine last year about this time. "The agenda being pushed and the ultimate impact intended is to make young people automatically identify with one political party."
A number of groups, including the NAACP, the Texas League of United Latin American Citizens and the Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education have joined forces [ http://texasnaacp.org/?tag=text-books ] to beat back the measures, which they said would have a negative impact on minority children.
The groups sought a federal review of the state's public education and have raised claims that the Texas State Board of Education has violated federal civil rights laws. In a formal complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education, the groups charge that the new curriculum was devised to "discriminate."
The measures went as far as to replace instances of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with "Atlantic triangular trade [ http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Slave-trade-would-become-Atlantic-triangular-trade-under-new-proposals-94506319.html ]."
"It is going to be extremely psychologically harmful to African-American young people because they are marginalized in the curriculum," Bledsoe said. "It will require them to be taught things such as the benevolence of slavery and the problems with affirmative action rather than the good and the bad."
"They voted down a motion that requires students to be taught about the terrorism brought about by the Ku Klux Klan and what they did to ethnic and racial minorities, but they turn around and pass a provision that requires the teaching of the violence of the Black Panther Party."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/tea-party-tennessee-textbooks-slavery_n_1224157.html [with comments]
===
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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