From PBS Frontline
Does it ever bug you that most elementary, middle and high school teachers are expected to hid the truth from their students. It's like they are suppose to tell the truth but leave out the parts that might make respectable people look bad. When someone says I didn't lie I just left out the part that would upset you it normally upsets you more later because that person didn't tell you right away and made you feel like you idiot because they knew something you didn't. That's the way I felt when my history teacher showed me the chart above of President Jefferson's most likely true family tree.
I say most likely because the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society won't allow Jefferson to be exhumed, but they could still test Jefferson's uncle's male decedents since Jefferson didn't have any sons. There were stories passed down about Thomas Woodson being his son, but his descendent's DNA proved he was not a Jefferson descendant. Eston Hemings' decedent's DNA, however, proved that he was a Jefferson descendant. The problem is that this only proves that he is related to Jefferson and they can't prove that Eston was his son, but there are a lot of other statistics that make it only logical for Thomas Jefferson to be his father. So what's the big deal? Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson's slave. He couldn't marry her because it was illegal for slaves to marry and he promised his wife he wouldn't remarry. The thing is this wasn't an uncommon occurrence with slave owners. A lot of slave owners had babies with their slaves, and many did while they still had wives. This caused a lot of race problems and this was the first time I'd ever been told this.
I understand that teachers couldn't tell this to kids in elementary school because most of them probably wouldn't understand it, but what were they trying to protect us from in high school. I think we could have handled hearing that the people we looked up to had some flaws. I was always taught that he was a good person with good ideas, but when I found out he contradicted his beliefs by owing slaves I guess I was just disappointed. I was under this impression for so long and I felt like I made false judgements when I didn't have all the information.
The information I'm learning in my history class makes me question if most of history I've been taught is a lie. I've learned that Lincoln wasn't really against slavery, Rosa Parks wasn't the only African American woman to refuse to move from her seat, etc. It's opened my eyes and I thought I was finally getting the whole truth in my high school history class for the first time because it wasn't alway pro America. The class has opened my eyes, but I was hoping that would have happened before college. There is so much more to history that past history teachers probably "forgot" to tell you, so never give up on finding the truth and the whole truth, not just what people want you to believe.
I just listened to the author of a book about the Trail of Tears on public radio yesterday. I don't recall even hearing about that in any history classes in high school. There is so much that is left out. Thanks to this thing called 'digital humanities' we now have access to so much information.
ReplyDeleteI learned about this my senior year of high school and was shocked! I remember we had to read a selection in our Multicultural English class called "Grave Matters at Monticello". This has stuck in my mind since then because of the play on words that the title uses. It is about Thomas Jefferson's black descendants not being able to be buried in the family grave. I've found a link to the article if you'd like to read it!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.villagevoice.com/1999-01-05/news/grave-matters-at-monticello/
Even though I may be one of the few who learned this in high school, i still find it shocking that we learned it in our English class instead of history. Thats messed up, just sayin!