IN DEPTH
How black history survives outside of the archive
How could the unwritten story of an enslaved black woman force the world’s most powerful nation to recalibrate one of its most revered men nearly 200 years after she died? Here author Tammye Huf explains the significance of the story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson to her own work, and how important it is to keep family histories alive. You can read the full version of this interview at
https://tinyurl.com/CILIPTammye.
IN 1998 a DNA test showed that Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, was the mother of six of his children. The test was commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Founda- tion which was founded, amongst other things, “to keep alive the name and memory of Thomas Jefferson, as the apostle of human freedom”. It was commissioned in response to growing doubt over the official story – that Jefferson’s nephew was the father – and growing faith in a version of events that had been kept alive for 200 years by word of mouth.
In 2018 the foundation accepted the evidence in writing, saying that the relationship between Sally Hemings and Jefferson was “settled historical matter”. It accepted that Sally Hemings, who died in 1835, had a relationship with Thomas Jefferson that probably started before the French Revolution in 1789, and lasted for four decades, including his time in office.
History and fiction Author Tammye Huf, who was a keynote speaker at CILIP Con- ference 2024, used Sally Hemings’s story as background to the character Maple in her novel A More Perfect Union – which won the Diverse Book award in 2021. Although a work of fiction, A More Perfect Union is based on a real story from Tammye’s own family history: that of her great great grandmother Suzie, who was born as a slave and married a white man called Henry. But unlike Sally Hemings’s story, Tam- mye’s family history remains largely unrecorded: “When you are talking about historically insignificant and illiterate people, letters or documents are hard to come by,” she said. Tammye uses Sally’s story as a foundation for the fictional character Maple who is the victim of a “rape culture” understood
Tammye Huf’s great great grandparents Suzie and Henry.
to have existed among slave owners. And she believes that Sally’s story survived for the same reason that her own family history has survived, that it was kept alive “Anecdotally within her family. In the same way my family’s history was passed down. “I think it makes sense to rely on word of mouth, as this is how their stories would be passed down. I have a photograph of Henry and Suzie (in the novel her name is Sarah) which was taken much later in their life, so there is some physical evidence of them, but no signed paperwork, which, to be honest, I wouldn’t expect to find.”
Obvious opposition Tammye Huf. October-November 2024
Challenges to difficult stories coming to light can come from many places. Some are more obvious than others. “Any time you seek to draw a historical figure who has been revered within a community as nuanced, flawed or less than perfect, there will be those who do not appreciate the effort,” Tammye said. “In this case modern day DNA testing made it possible to confirm the true version of the story, but there first had to be an attitude shift on the part of the Jefferson Foundation to accept that this story might be true and then commission the testing. “Through the long years that the Hemings children were not officially recognised as Thomas Jefferson’s, there were people who insisted it was so. The rumours were kept alive with anecdotal evidence (the Hemings family always insisted on the Jefferson paternity) and circumstantial evidence (like Jefferson’s politi- cal opponents writing about his involvement with Hemings in the newspapers in order to discredit Jefferson), but there was no iron-clad documentation. For historians, archivists and scholars, to acknowledge the possibility would be to invite an unwelcome blight on Jefferson’s reputation.” Tammye said: “This is an excellent example of how power dictates acceptable fact, whether those facts are true or not.” Tammye goes on to look at her own family’s story, how stories are recorded and the role of library, information professionals and archivists in surfacing marginalised history. Read more at
https://tinyurl.com/CILIPTammye. IP
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 15
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