Plowshares Collaborative News & Events
February 2, 2005 7:00 PM
SHAY BANKS-YOUNG & JULIA JEFFERSON: Descendants of President Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings, his slave
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Goshen College, Free and Open to the Public
Genetic testing strongly suggests that Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation’s most respected Presidents, bore children with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves.
This was shocking news for many historians, who for years had denied the possibility that Jefferson was capable of such "immoral" behavior. It was not, however, shocking to Julia Jefferson and Shay Banks-Young and their families, who have always been confident that their great-great-grandfathers, Eston and Madison, were, in fact, the sons of Jefferson and Hemings. The proof of this relationship, which seems to have lasted 38 years, leaves us with a great number of questions about race relations in the United States.
Jefferson is a former educator turned businesswoman and her "new" cousin, Banks-Young, is a preventive health trainer and a poet who has hosted her own public affairs talk show. Jefferson is white and Banks-Young is black. Now, they are looking forward to their role as a focal point for what they hope will be an honest new dialogue on these very important issues we face as a society.
In this unique presentation, the audience will have the opportunity to listen in on their conversation, hearing these articulate women discuss the many differences and similarities they share. They are anxious to engage the audience in their discussion which makes for a very interactive program.
Together and separately, Banks-Young and Jefferson have appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, BET Tonight with Travis Smiley, and Sally Jesse Raphael, and have been interviewed by Time, U.S. News and World Report and People. Cosmopolitan named Banks-Young as one of their “Fun, Fearless Females” for her community building efforts.
Anne Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, said on The NewsHour with Jim Leher that "the thing this shows very clearly is that we're not two separate people, black and white; we are a people who share a common culture, a common land, and it turns out a common blood line, and this is something we haven't wanted to deal with openly."
