Vote Rejects Hemings Claim

A group of Thomas Jefferson’s descendants decided Sunday that DNA tests and historic evidence are not enough to admit relatives of Sally Hemings, a Jefferson slave, as bona fide members of their organization.

The Monticello Assn., whose 700 members are descended from Jefferson and his daughters, Martha and Maria, opted not to welcome the Hemings family into the organization. The decision also makes them ineligible for burial in the family graveyard at Monticello, Jefferson’s estate near Charlottesville, Va.

“I’m terribly disappointed,” said Julia Jefferson Westerinen, 67, Hemings’ great-great-great-granddaughter. “It does point out the fact that the civil rights struggle is not over.”

Westerinen had hoped that the Jefferson family would take this opportunity to make a powerful statement for racial equality and harmony by embracing Hemings’ descendants.

“It doesn’t surprise me; it only disappoints me,” said Westerinen, who traces her lineage to Eston Hemings, Sally’s youngest son. “I pity them. I feel they’re locked in the cages of their own prejudice.”

But her cousin, Shay Banks-Young, 57, was less resigned.

“We haven’t lost anything,” said Banks-Young, of Columbus, Ohio, whose ancestor is another Hemings son. “We don’t have to prove anything. It’s a fact. Us not being part of this association does not remove us from the family. That can’t be done.”

The 74-6 vote showed how determined many of the descendants of Jefferson’s white daughters are to reject what most scholars now consider historical truth: They share their link to Jefferson with descendants of a black slave.

Rumors of a relationship between the third president and Hemings have been part of the Hemings family lore for generations and even were mentioned in newspaper articles during Jefferson’s presidency.

In 1998, scientists determined through DNA analysis that a male member of the Jefferson family had fathered Hemings’ son Eston. Two years later, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello, studied the DNA results and historical data and announced its conclusion that Jefferson himself had probably fathered Eston and possibly fathered all of Hemings’ six children.

A committee of the Monticello Assn., which owns the family graveyard, also was studying the issue. That committee presented its 24-page report over the weekend at the association’s annual meeting in Charlottesville, arguing that there was “not sufficient evidence” to admit Hemings’ descendants.

“This isn’t a racial issue; this is an issue about science and history,” said Nathaniel Abeles of Washington, a project manager for a software company and the new president of the Monticello Assn.

“It’s merely a decision based on whether the Hemingses have provided persuasive evidence that they are related to Jefferson,” added John Works, a past president of the group. “They haven’t.”

Abeles said the vote brings closure, at least for now, to the controversy that has shone a spotlight on the annual Jefferson family meeting for four years. There were 117 Jefferson descendants at this year’s meeting and 120 guests, including 44 members of the Hemings family.

The association’s leadership has tried to downplay the racial issue, but even during the weekend’s meetings, racial tensions flared.

Lucian Truscott IV, a writer from Los Angeles and the association member who has led the drive to include the Hemingses, shared an e-mail he received from Works showing the face of a black man with a zipper in place of a mouth.

Works said the image was meant to humorously make the point that Truscott should not talk to the press until after the vote and was not intended to make a racial statement.

Works said the brouhaha over the e-mail showed how “sensitive” the issue has become, and he publicly apologized to the association and the Hemingses.

But the Hemings contingent was clearly offended by the image.

“It shows that racism is alive and well in Virginia,” Westerinen said.

Truscott said he was very unhappy about the outcome.

“This family, above and beyond all others, should have stood up and embraced all of its members, but they didn’t do it,” he said.

Association members said that if DNA technology improves or if new historical evidence is uncovered, they may reopen the issue.

But the man who started the controversy by studying the DNA, retired pathologist Eugene Foster, suggested that there would always be limits to DNA testing.

“DNA technology may come to the point where the thing may be settled to satisfy scientists,” Foster said. “It probably never will be settled to the satisfaction of people who don’t want to believe it.”