Landmark ‘Sally Hemings Exhibition’ Opens At African-American Museum in Fair Park
ArtandSeek.net September 20, 2018 7‘Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello’ is a landmark exhibition opening this weekend at the African-American Museum at Fair Park – just as the State Fair begins. The show was expanded from a previous one organized in 2012 by the Jefferson estate and the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. Thanks to a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, what was added are significant items about Sally Hemings, including recent discoveries.
The exhibition’s sub-title is ‘Paradox of Liberty.’ That’s because the Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence with its stirring statement that all men are created equal — is also the Thomas Jefferson who owned slaves. And, he had sex with one of them: Sally Hemings. She bore six of his children – whom she had Jefferson agree to emancipate once they reached 21 years of age. She, on the other hand, never was. Hemings was also the maid to Jefferson’s own daughter.
![](https://artandseek.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/caitlin-hesper-with-counciilman.jpg)
Parts of the exhibition were still being installed Thursday. Dallas City Councilmember Kevin Felder, who was instrumental in bringing the exhibition to Dallas, speaks with museum technician Caitlin Hesper. Photo: Jerome Weeks
“Yes, it was complicated,” says Gayle Jessup White, “but the story of America is a complicated one, isn’t it? What happened at Monticello, at Jefferson’s plantation, was not unique. It was happening all over the South.”
White is Monticello’s community engagement officer and a descendant of both Hemings and Jefferson. She says the exhibition tells the story of Hemings and other slave families through day-to-day items – items like Jefferson’s own laptop desk to tools the slaves used. It even traces the lineage of six slave families.
![](https://artandseek.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/hemings-lineage.jpg)
Part of the exhibition traces the lineage of six slave families from Monticello, including Hemings. Photo: Jerome Weeks
“So it’s a snapshot in time,” White says, “a time when America was still trying to figure itself out.”
It’s a snapshot we’ve rarely seen before – not in this kind of detail.