(Photograph courtesy Monticello)
It's hard to talk about Thomas Jefferson's Monticello without focusing on Thomas Jefferson. But, with "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty," the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia is going to try.
"This exhibition isn't about Jefferson. It's about the enslaved people who built and maintained Monticello," says Adele Johnson, the executive director of the Black History Museum & Cultural Center. Beginning Jan. 18, the museum, housed in the former Leigh Street Armory, will host the much-acclaimed Smithsonian-affiliated exhibition, which is making its Virginia debut.
"Jefferson was the writer of the Declaration of Independence, and yet he also owned 607 slaves," Johnson says. "That's the paradox. What I like about this exhibition is that you learn about those enslaved people, not as slaves but as people who have families, jobs, skills, dreams and hopes like everybody else. This exhibition gives them voice."
It wasn't so long ago that Monticello failed to acknowledge Jefferson's "servants" at all. Until the mid-1980s, tours avoided all mention of slavery. But today's Monticello is different. "That doesn't happen anymore," says Gayle Jessup White, Monticello's community engagement officer.
"Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello" premiered at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2012, co-curated by The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The Washington Post called it "groundbreaking," and the 340-piece display drew 1.5 million patrons on a nationwide, five-city tour.
"Monticello has been working for decades on bringing the stories of the enslaved and making them a part of the narrative here,” White says. “It began with archaeological work way back in the 1960s. But it was when the oral history project kicked off 26 years ago that the emphasis really took off." The Getting Word Oral History Project interviewed 170 descendants of enslaved people living and working on Jefferson's property.
One of the exhibition’s most powerful pieces is a wall that contains the names of the 607 individuals enslaved at Monticello. There are excavated tools, artwork, personal items and restored handmade furniture. "There's a lot to see, a lot to learn about, a lot to talk about," Johnson says.
A descendant of both Sally Hemings' family as well as Thomas Jefferson, White will lead a panel discussion with other descendants during the exhibit's Richmond run. "It's meaningful and significant to me that people who had been ignored and marginalized and forgotten, whose lives were almost erased from history, are the focus of this exhibition," she says.
The irony of how it's all possible doesn't escape her. "Jefferson took copious notes,” she says; adding, "We know more about the enslaved at Monticello than in most plantations of this size — including how much people cost."
The exhibit will surely spark debate and conversation. "We're always happy for that," Johnson says. "We want people to wonder, to learn, to do their own research. We also want them to feel comfortable having these conversations. And also, to perhaps make connections to what's happening in our world.”
"Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty" comes to the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia Jan. 18-April 18. $10.
