At a meeting of the Monticello Association last May, Dorothy Jefferson Westerinen felt the sting of what her African-American cousins have endured for a lifetime.
There,
on the plantation estate of Thomas Jefferson, descendants of the
President and his wife and the President and his slave, sat down together
for the first time. But it was no ordinary family gathering.
Westerinen
glanced around the room and noticed many unhappy faces. Then before she
even finished her dinner, a man hurried to the microphone, practically
knocking people over in his rush to be heard. It is a moment she will
relive over and over.
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"I'll never forget the sickening feeling in my stomach as I listened to him angrily proclaim that he wanted all of the Hemings to leave the meeting. I resented the ignominy of being forced out of the room like children who had misbehaved before we had even finished our meals," she said.
Westerinen
is the white great-great-great granddaughter of Eston Hemings, the youngest
son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and Julia (Ann)
Hemings Jefferson. After being freed, the light-skinned Eston took Jefferson's
last name and passed as a white person in white society.
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