As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding in 1776, the nation has wrapped itself in patriotic pageantry. We will watch majestic tall ships sail into New York Harbor, we will admire military flyovers bearing new American insignia, and we will witness Washington’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turn green with algae just weeks after it underwent a major multimillion-dollar renovation to make it shine an “American flag blue” color. It is a celebration of the American experiment that is still experimenting as fireworks and orchestras, picnics and cowboys praise the American way.
But amid the fireworks and fanfare, another question lingers. What was America celebrating 250 years ago for the millions of Africans who were bought, sold, transported, and enslaved? What was the social climate for a new people being born and created from their homeland into a new place, called America, with no rules for them, no humanity for Blackness, no regard for the darker race.
To better understand that contradiction, I turned to Jefferson on Race by Harvard professor Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed, one of America’s foremost Jefferson scholars. Rather than relying on modern interpretations, Gordon-Reed allows readers to wrestle with Jefferson largely through his own writings, letters, and personal notes. The result is a remarkable and deeply unsettling portrait of one of the most brilliant—and contradictory—men in American history, a forefather with thought-provoking ideas about how this new country would address issues of emancipation, liberty, and equality.
Jefferson gave the world some of its most enduring words. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” Those words have inspired democratic movements across the globe for ages. Yet Jefferson himself owned approximately 600 enslaved people during his lifetime and benefited from an institution that denied the humanity of those whose labor sustained his wealth as he husbanded his very own Black family.
That contradiction sits at the center of this extraordinary book.
Following the death of his wife, Martha Jefferson, Sally Hemings—Martha’s enslaved half-sister—became Jefferson’s lifelong companion. Hemings lived with Jefferson for nearly forty years and bore six of his children. While in Paris, where slavery was prohibited, Jefferson reportedly promised Sally that their children would be freed when they reached adulthood if she returned with him to Virginia. Several of those children eventually gained their freedom as they became White adults. Technically, they were mulattos.
The story of James Hemings, Sally’s brother, is equally compelling. Enslaved by Jefferson, James accompanied him to Paris, where he became the first American formally trained as a French chef. He mastered French cuisine and later introduced dishes—including what became America’s famous macaroni and cheese—to Jefferson’s table. His brilliance, however, did not spare him from the psychological burden of enslavement. James Hemings died by suicide at the age of thirty-six.
Jefferson invested in training many of the people he enslaved because their skills enhanced the operation and prestige of Jefferson’s home in Monticello. Yet even while recognizing extraordinary talent among individuals such as Hemings, Jefferson never abandoned his belief in a racial hierarchy. Jefferson introduced America to “racism.” He believed in white superiority.
His writings reveal a man who regarded race as biologically fixed. He believed whites were intellectually superior to Blacks. He speculated that racial mixing altered inherited characteristics while still insisting that African ancestry marked inferiority. Ironically, these views coexisted with the reality that members of his own family were of mixed race.
Jefferson’s views on Native Americans reveal another contradiction. He often described Indigenous nations as culturally and intellectually equal to Europeans because they possessed organized governments, languages, and social institutions. African Americans, however, were denied that same recognition, despite the civilizations from which many had been violently taken.
That is Jefferson’s paradox.
Historians often rank Abraham Lincoln as America’s most consequential president because he preserved the Union and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln confronted the institution of slavery during its greatest national crisis because Lincoln’s executive order freed the slaves.
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president of the United States. He was elected in 1860 as the nominee of the newly founded anti-slavery party, established a few years earlier, in 1854.
Yet I would argue that Jefferson’s influence reaches even deeper into the American story. Jefferson did not invent white supremacy; he justified it. It existed long before him. But through his immense intellectual authority, he helped give racial hierarchy a language that could coexist with liberty. He demonstrated how a nation could proclaim universal equality while excluding millions from its promise.
That contradiction has echoed across American history for 250 years. It has been America’s underbelly.
Jefferson on Race is not simply a biography. It is an invitation to examine the intellectual foundations of the United States. It asks readers to confront uncomfortable truths rather than comforting myths. Annette Gordon-Reed neither excuses Jefferson nor dismisses his genius. Instead, she reveals a complicated man whose greatest achievements and greatest failures remain inseparable.
As Americans celebrate 250 years of independence, perhaps the most patriotic act is not waving the flag but asking difficult questions about the ideals upon which the nation was built—and who was excluded from them.
Jefferson gave America “We the People.” His words, his writings, his intellect, and his wordsmith provided America’s manifesto.
The enduring question, then and now, is this:
Who did he believe those people were? “WE THE PEOPLE“.
