Jefferson on Race : A Reader

From The New York Timesbestselling and Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jeffersons writings on race that every American should readAmong Americas Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal enslaved more than 600 people of African descent even as he acknowledged the injustice of slavery, saw himself as its opponent, and condemned it in his writings. How is this possible? In Jefferson on Race, Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Annette Gordon-Reed gathers Jeffersons most revealing writings about African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, enabling readers as never before to directly explore his complex and contradictory thoughts, feelings, and decisions on these subjectsthe most hotly debated aspect of his legacy.These selections come from Jeffersons public and private writings,

letters, and plantation records, as well as accounts by contemporaries, including his son Madison Hemings and three other people formerly enslaved at Monticello. The book documents Jeffersons ideas aboutand self-image in relation toAfrican Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, as well as his conduct, including interactions with individual Black and Native people. The writings show how Jefferson responded to living in a multiracial slave society while professing progressive ideals, and how his views on race and slavery were shaped by his experiences with enslaved Black people.Jefferson on Race is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Jeffersons conflicted attitudesand the impact of race and slavery on American history. [Publisher's text]