Telekon wrote:
We don't have data on the rates of white-on-black rape in the antebellum south. If it happened it's unlikely the offspring entered society as whites. Mulattos were considered black by the one drop rule. The products of intermingling between blacks and whites were probably siphoned into the black population. Most blacks have white ancestry and that's probably where they got it from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_HemingsQuote:
In 1822 at the age of 24, Beverly "ran away" from Monticello and was not pursued. His sister Harriet Hemings at the age of 21 followed in the same year. The overseer Edmund Bacon said that he gave her $50 and put her on a stagecoach, presumably to join her brother. In his memoir, Bacon said Harriet was near white and very beautiful, and that people said Jefferson freed her because she was his daughter. Jefferson thus consented to two of Sally's children going to freedom when of age. Madison Hemings said in his memoir that they each entered white society in Washington, DC according to their appearance, and each married well.
Of the hundreds of slaves he owned, Jefferson formally freed only two slaves in his lifetime: Sally's older brothers Robert, who had to buy his freedom, and James Hemings (who was required to train his brother to get his freedom). He freed five slaves in his will - all males from the Hemings family, including Madison and Eston Hemings, his two "natural" children. Harriet was the only female slave he allowed to go free. In addition to manumission for the Hemings men in his will, he petitioned the legislature to allow them to stay in the state. No documentation has been found for Sally Hemings' emancipation but Jefferson's married daughter Martha Randolph apparently gave Hemings her "time" after Jefferson's death. This informal freedom allowed her to live in Virginia, and she remained with her two youngest sons in nearby Charlottesville for the next nine years. In the Albemarle County 1833 census, all three were recorded as free white persons.
04 Dec 2011, 9:20 pm
