Word: slaving
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...strength lay in the stories, passed from generation to generation. And so when descendants of Thomas Woodson rolled up their sleeves to give blood for DNA testing, they saw it as a chance to affirm their faith--that Thomas was, in fact, a child of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. "We knew it like religion," says Robert Golden, Thomas' great-great-great- grandson. The results, however, came as a shock: Jefferson was not Thomas Woodson's father...
...established--Thomas and Madison--regard themselves as black but have long assumed that Jefferson is their ancestor. Yet the descendants of Eston, the son proved almost conclusively to be a child of Jefferson and Hemings, see themselves as white and for generations had never claimed any link to their slave ancestor (or to Thomas Jefferson, for that matter, though there was some talk of a connection to one of his uncles). The story of how the Hemings family diverged onto opposite sides of the color line says much about "passing," a social practice that shakes more than a few family...
...Beloved, the highly-anticipated adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel, slavery is explored in a subtle, almost metaphorical fashion. It is an exercise in psychology, exploring the mind of Morrison's steel-willed protagonist Sethe (Oprah Winfrey), a former slave who now lives as a free woman in Ohio in the 1870s. Beloved is a handsome, classy production that is distinguished in every possible way, but it is also a cold film. The screenplay grapples admirably with Morrison's convoluted narrative but can never get to the heart of it. The saving grace of the movie is the renowned cast...
...power that allowed Jefferson to compel Hemings into his bed. It was power which allowed the affair to go on for so many years. It was power which left Hemings' manumission uncertain. Hemings could have had absolutely no agency in such an arrangement, as no slave in a situation with a white master ever had. Numerous masters engaged in sexual activity with their slaves, threatening that they would be sold or worse if they did not comply. Why do we assume Jefferson should have been any different...
...capable of sexual misconduct. Perhaps because it is too difficult to see "the greatest hero of the eighteenth century" as a hypocrite. But by validating the union of Jefferson and Hemings as one of love, we dismiss the tragic legacy of slavery and the complex and perverted relationship between slave and master...