IN HONOR of Mr. Jefferson, who never obtained a Ph.D., students at the University refer to all of their professors as Mister and Misses regardless of doctoral status. But perhaps students should remember that the 608 slaves that Jefferson owned in his lifetime called the Jeffersons Master and Ma'am. While Jefferson was indeed a remarkable man with many talents, our reverence for him should not blind America from the truth behind his ownership of slaves.
Late last October, I had the pleasure of visiting Monticello and taking the "Plantation Community Tour" given by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, and my esperience serves as an interesting example of softening or downplaying Jefferson's role in slavery out of reverence for our esteemed founding father.
Since slaves were not considered citizens during Jefferson's lifetime (let alone members of the Monticello community), the irony in the name "Plantation Community Tour" is a mockery of the plight of slaves in and of itself. While the name seeks to instill the idea of a slave community, it ignores the obvious fact that slaves were removed from the larger plantation community. Walking down Mulberry Row, the living place of many slaves, tourists see the foundations of homes smaller than dorm rooms, yet served to house up to 10 people. These shack-sized homes can be seen from the windows of Monticello, and their small size in comparison to the grandeur of Monticello demonstrates that an "equal"community at Monticello was just an ideal.
The analogies used in the tour, however, were much more intellectually disturbing than its name. The tour guide explained that Jefferson did own slaves, yet the portrayal of how these slaves lived made my stomach churn. The guide used analogies that compared the life of slaves to life of a college student.
As my mind raced through visions of slaves having fraternity parties and eight a.m. Spanish classes, my tour guide began comparing the living situations of domestic slaves to college dorms, with roommates and dirty living conditions. Our guide also explained that slaves had to work together to get through slavery because of the innate difficulties of slave life but then compared the cooperation among slaves to the cooperation among college students who work together in order to make it through college.
Extreme bias also existed in the description of living conditions for slaves. The tourists were told that the slaves were all well-fed, but that the quality of the food was sometimes low. The guide told us that the bacon given to slaves was of such terrible quality that sometimes there was no meat at all and the slaves were simply given fat. To counteract this argument, we heard that slaves rubbed the fat on children's feet since Jefferson did not give his slaves shoes until the age of 10. Somehow the guide made it seem acceptable that the food was terrible and that there were no shoes for children because it served as a method for protecting children's feet from the infections and cold weather due to a lack of shoes.
Minimizing Jefferson's role in slavery minimizes slavery itself, and such analogies between college life and slave life serve only to ridicule the millions of men and women unjustifiably held captive for hundreds of years. While Jefferson was a great man who did more for this country than most people ever will, hiding or softening the fact that he owned slaves does not benefit Jefferson, the slaves he owned or the members of modern society who respect and honor our founding fathers.
The Monticello guide's comments allow us to ponder how deeply engrained in the culture of both the North and the South slavery must have been for a hero such as Thomas Jefferson to have owned slaves. The seeming hypocrisy innate in Jefferson's authorship of the Declaration of Independence and call for liberty for all people even further demonstrates that at the time slavery was a simple fact of life, relatively untroubling to even the greatest of moral philosophers developing new theories of individual freedom. We cannot pretend that our country's history or founders are without blemishes and mistakes, and reforming past wrongs through a democratic process has made the United States the country that it is today. Fighting through prejudices and racism of the past has strengthened what it means to be an American and has allowed the current generation to break down the barriers of race more than ever before.
Gary Sandling, director of interpretation at Monticello, said that "we are committed to sharing with visitors all aspects of life at Monticello and we have to address the issue of slavery," but he agreed that perhaps the analogies used in this case were not the most effective. What is important in this situation is not what specifically was said on the tour, but the chance that the tour offers to ponder Jefferson's slave ownership in relation to his theories of individual freedom. As a nation, we must reconcile our lofty opinions of Thomas Jefferson as a slave owner rather than denying his participation in slavery; so too must teachers and guides embrace the truth and use it to explain the mentality of slaveholders and moral philosophers at the time.
Greg Crapanzano's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at gcrapanzano@cavalierdaily.com.
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