Wow.

This is strong, harsh stuff.

Jefferson’s views on the dangers of mixing the races necessitate a very different frame or lens for viewing how he must have thought about Sally Hemings and the children he had with her.

Indeed, the whole “relationship" becomes impossible to romanticize as some white people try to do.

She joined him in Paris in 1787, two years after this book was published. I wonder if Jefferson thought about the things he wrote as she negotiated with him privileges for herself and her children in exchange for returning to the United States and the status of a slave.