Sally Hemings - Representation in Other Media

Representation in Other Media

• 1853, William Wells Brown, known as the first African-American novelist, published his Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, a novel based on the Jefferson-Hemings story. It is available as an Etext at Project Gutenberg.
• The Jeffersons′ third season opening episode George and the President, has a plot linked to the Jefferson-Hemings controversy. Jealous over the advertising success of a competitor, George comes up with his own campaign, dressing up in colonial clothes and claiming to be Thomas Jefferson's great-great-great grandson via Sally Hemings. To avoid the risk of George being ridiculed because of his behaviour, Louise, Lionel and Jenny plot to consider him a zebra (in George's idiolect, to be a zebra means to be of mixed race), a thing unacceptable for him, being the bigot he is.
• 1979, Barbara Chase-Riboud's novel Sally Hemings became a bestseller. Hers was the first work in which an author had portrayed Sally Hemings as a fully realized person. CBS began to adapt the popular novel as a miniseries, but the historians Virginius Dabney (a direct descendant of Jefferson's sister Martha) and Dumas Malone successfully campaigned against it directly with the network's president William S. Paley, and persuaded him to kill the project.
• Wolf by the Ears (1991), a novel by Ann Rinaldi, portrays Sally Hemings' relationship with Jefferson through the eyes of their daughter Harriett.
• Jefferson in Paris, a 1995 film, portrayed the early relationship between Sally Hemings (played by Thandie Newton) and Jefferson (Nick Nolte).
• Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, a CBS television miniseries (air dates: 2/13/00 and 2/16/00; writer: Tina Andrews director: Charles Haid; with Carmen Ejogo as Hemings and Sam Neill as Thomas Jefferson). As PBS noted in a Frontline program, "Though many quarrelled with the portrayal of Hemings as unrealistically modern and heroic, no major historian challenged the series' premise that Hemings and Jefferson had a 38-year relationship that produced children."
• In May 2000, PBS Frontline had an extensive documentary program entitled Jefferson's Blood, about the issues of DNA, historical evidence related to his paternity of Hemings' children, and the significance of the controversy and its issues in American history.
• 2001, From The Diary Of Sally Hemings, with a text by author and professor Sandra Seaton, is a song cycle by the American composer William Bolcom; it was premiered at the Library of Congress, one of several institutional sponsors that commissioned the new work. See the referenced website for associated photos of the Jefferson-Hemings descendants who attended the premiere.