Methought I saw Sally Hemings in Her Master’s Bed
‘twas merely a CRT mirage…
Methought I saw the late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Virginia, from the grave,
Whom George’s great son to her glad lover gave,
Preserved from ignominy by prejudgments quaint.
Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint
Purest impure fun the old Tom did have,
And such as yet once more distrust to save
Full sight of her progeny, on Earth, enslaved.
Came vested all in black, piercing through each salve;
Her vitality, with his, and each child that she bore
Loved, sweetly, raised in his shadowy plain sight
So clearly mattered not the least when his estate sold them at the slave store.
But Oh! as to embrace him she inclined,
I woke, but woke is wicked sayeth wealthy white ill-wind.
- Tom Tordillo April 28, 2022
Hat tip to John Milton, Sonnet 23 - a model of tragic love and loss, in an era of tragic loving.
Milton’s (1608–1674) first wife died from complications following childbirth. So did his second wife. His third wife was 31 years younger than he when they married.
Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles, died soon after pregnancy with her sixth child. One of Martha’s half sisters was an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings.
The precise fusion between CRT, Hemings, Milton, and childbirth that prompted my poem responds to a world in which America may overturn the constitutional right for women to choose when and whether to have children (see Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health).
If that happens, then the main organizational imperative in much of rural America will be eradicated. Hence…CRT must be banned.
‘Conclusive studies’ conclusively concluded Thomas Jefferson did not father children with Hemings for centuries. After all, WRITTEN DOCUMENTS proved it.
At least until someone trained in CRT looked critically at the evidence.
The ‘conventional’ story posited Jefferson’s nephews, rather than Thomas himself, fathered children borne by Sally Hemings. Historians assumed the documents were true, shifted the ‘burden of proof’ onto descendants of Sally Hemings, then concluded the white witnesses were reliable, the black ones were not.
Historians accepted these claims despite a few problems in the official narrative, such as:
- obvious contradictions in those written documents;
- obvious self-interest that might motivate authors of those claims to lie in order to protect the legendary reputation of an esteemed figure;
- certain scientific problems relating to the process of conception (Thomas Jefferson was physically present 8–10 months before each of Sally’s children were born, while the alleged fathers in the ‘conventional’ history were not)
Critical race theory, like every other critical theory, zeroes in on these sorts of cases. Why do we assume the ‘conventional’ story is ‘true’ and place the burden of proof on those who question it? Why did the ‘conventional’ story assume the white witnesses are reliable and the black ones are not?
I thought, “All right, if you think that this is like a legal case, let’s play the game. Don’t beat up on an ex-slave, somebody who’s dead and who you think you can make fun of with impunity. Let’s play the game, and see how this goes.
Annette Gordon-Reed, “Critiquing the Family Tree: White Supremacy in the Writing of History” from Carving Out a Humanity: Race, Rights, and Redemption
It’s an obvious premise: we should interrogate EVERY witness, and we should do so with the same standard. Except for centuries, nobody bothered. About one of the most important ‘Founding Fathers’ of the United States of America. Because the ‘conventional’ story was…convenient.
What else might they have overlooked?
How is that relevant today?
And that’s why CRT must be banned. When people learn about slavery, they must learn it existed a long time ago, ended a long time ago, static trivia here, irrelevant rote memorization there. Any other story is a Marxist conspiracy.
CRT methods led to the shocking discovery Thomas Jefferson fathered several children with Sally Hemings. That teaches children to hate America.
CRT must be banned because teenagers who learn old white men exploited positions of power to sleep with teenagers might become afraid of certain men — particularly in Florida, where older men made fortunes that way, and where senior government officials covered it up whenever rich white men did it.
These matters are ancient history. Sitting Congressmen should be given the benefit of the doubt. Judges never do such things in the Deep South.
If youngsters discover that Jefferson slept with Hemings, they may want to sleep with Thomas Jefferson themselves to test and verify definitively that “all men are created equal” (but are some more equal than others?). Imagine the gender confusion!
If Americans learn ‘the genius of Monticello’ amassed so much debt that when he died, some of his children were sold to pay off those debts…well, we might feel differently about his intellect…or other so-called ‘geniuses.’
The story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings might be used to explore how an enslaved woman survived in the face of one of the most powerful men in the country who most likely began sexually abusing her when she was a teenager. Trauma? Abuse? Slavery?
For all the things we do not know about Sally Hemings, we do know she survived the ordeal. Her descendants remain. Their struggles matter. Real human beings struggle with abuse today.
Banning CRT is necessary because America really shouldn’t believe that anyone’s lives matter… unless those lives are duly monetized.
