Shannon LaNier carries two legacies into America’s 250th birthday weekend. He is the sixth great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, the former U.S. president who wrote that all men are created equal. He is also a direct descendant of Sally Hemings, the 14-year-old girl Jefferson enslaved, raped, and kept in a decades-long relationship while writing those words.
In an interview with The Guardian, LaNier reflected on Jefferson’s legacy.
“I wish he would have done more to free the enslaved people and practice what he actually preached,” LaNier, 47, said. “Sometimes I appreciate what he’s done for this country and how much of a genius he was. Other times I hate what he did and that he didn’t do more, and the hypocritical aspects, because we could have been so much further along as a society if he would have done what was right instead of what was profitable.”
Earlier theGrio covered LaNier’s 2020 op-ed calling for Jefferson statues to be removed, in which he described public monuments to slaveholders as “symbols of hate, racism and slavery.” TheGrio has also reported on how the founding fathers laid the framework for America’s ongoing cultural divisions, including the right-wing backlash against Monticello’s decision to tell the full story of the enslaved people who built and maintained Jefferson’s estate.
LaNier also discussed Sally Hemings directly in his interview with The Guardian, pushing back on the romanticized version of Jefferson’s relationship with her. Unlike most enslaved women, Hemings was able to negotiate the emancipation of her children with Jefferson while accompanying him in Paris, where she was legally free. She agreed to return to enslavement in Virginia only after Jefferson pledged to free their unborn children once they turned 21. “We know more about Jefferson but we have to give credit to Sally Hemings,” LaNier said. “It’s because of her that we know who we are today.”
LaNier also addressed the debate over whether Black Americans should celebrate July 4. “Some people in the Black community don’t want to celebrate July 4 because they say we have Juneteenth and we weren’t really free then,” he said. “But it’s just as important to celebrate July 4 because, if we did not, it would make all the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors in vain.” He added: “Who do they think built the White House? Who do they think was helping Jefferson with everything when he was writing the Declaration of Independence? All these things are part of the foundation of this country and it continues to try to get whitewashed or forgotten.”
