Charlottesville: a tourist in my old town

Thomas Jefferson’s house, Monticello, is an unique, attractive piece of architecture.

UPDATED: 2/4/2023

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In April 2018, I visited Charlottesville for a long weekend and enjoyed spending time as a tourist in a town that used to be mine. But it also led to some interesting reflections on how the city has always been and how it has changed, as well as how my own view as an adult has evolved.

I moved to Charlottesville in 1994, the summer before middle school, from Southern California. Had I heard of Thomas Jefferson before? I would imagine so given my age, although my California history classes were much more focused on that western state’s history. But I have absolutely no doubt that within days of moving to Charlottesville, or perhaps in the days leading up to the move, his name became very well known to me. Jefferson and Charlottesville are intermingled. In addition to Jefferson’s home being situated there in Albemarle County, Jefferson was the founder of the University of Virginia, housed in the center of the city. In high school, we got college application advice from guidance counselors trying to help students applying to college that if you were applying to UVA not make the mistake of writing about Jefferson in the application essay. Everyone was doing it, and it was sure to end with your application in a pile of rejection.

Writing this made me wonder whether I’m misremembering Jefferson’s presence or exaggerating this fact. As it is, I moved out of Charlottesville to attend college in 2000 so it has been a while. Never fear - Google to the rescue! The Charlottesville area tourism site speaks of Jefferson in sentence 4. Wikipedia makes it to paragraph 2 before his name - a towering, serious name that elicits Greek columns - makes its showing. But the search engine of our lives makes it clear after the first two sites that pop up, that ‘Charlottesville’ has also taken on a different meaning in the public consciousness. The many sites that follow are all Charlottesville, circa August 2017, when the university town made its unwanted front page appearance in national news with the so-called Unite the Right rally.

How does the Unite the Right rally tie to Jefferson? Stick with me, and I’ll tell you where the two connect for me.

There is no right or easy way to write about racism, about the history of slavery, about the founding of this country, about the hidden and the blatant issues that it seems increasingly likely our country will never fully come to grips with. Nor should there be an easy way to address hard subjects. But I also don’t think I can write about Charlottesville, about Jefferson, about where we are right now in time, without acknowledging the inherent conflicts, hypocrisy, inconsistencies, and irreconcilable origin of this country.

I lived in Charlottesville during my middle and high school years from 1994-2000, an era when Sally Hemings moved more into the public consciousness. Newer DNA technology was emerging that suggested that some or all of Sally Hemings’ offspring may have been fathered by Jefferson. The public was also particularly interested in presidential liaisons (a la Clinton).

I have memories of that time where there was rampant debate around Charlottesville as to the role Jefferson played in Sally’s life. A popular response was to implicate a male relative of Jefferson’s (with very similar DNA). Fingers have been pointed at various men over time, with one being Randolph Jefferson, Thomas’ brother. I recall around the same time (2000) a miniseries aired on TV called ‘Sally Hemings: An American Scandal’. Here’s a contemporaneous review and overview of it written by the Washington Post. From what I recall myself and is confirmed by that review, the interactions between Jefferson and Sally Hemings were portrayed as a great love affair. (Let the record show that Sally was 14, Jefferson 44 when their relationship is thought to have become sexual. And of course beyond the age difference, there was the basic brutal fact of Jefferson’s ownership.)

Now, 18 years later, I finally made it to Monticello for the first time. And yes, this is truly a confession that in spite of all of those years living in the area, I never made it there. I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the intervening years, Monticello has come to grips with an acknowledgement that Jefferson did father Sally’s children. There is a renewed interest and self-awareness at both Monticello and Montpelier (James Madison’s home) that I visited on this trip.

For more on how this is being handled at these two historic sites, check out my blogs about visiting each (Monticello here, Montpelier here). You can also check out how Monticello is addressing Sally Hemings on their website and their new acknowledgement of the role she played, as outlined in this New York Times article.

And here’s where we come full circle.

The Charlottesville I knew during my time living there (1994-2000) was initially dead-set in denial that Jefferson could ever have done something so human or not compatible with the expected behavior of a founding father as to have been responsible for Sally’s offspring. Or, if he was responsible, theirs was an epic love story, begun - where else? - in Paris. It seemed too difficult to imagine that Jefferson may have had (to modern interpretation) a dark side to his nature, to have taken what he legally could simply because he could. The American story seemed to require Jefferson seated atop a pedestal. This is the American way of things sometimes - a naive belief in the story of American exceptionalism that ignores the darker recesses of the American experience. The idea that America had pushed beyond the overt racial hierarchy of the past was shattered by the face of America that stepped confidently into the tiki-torched light, spewing the hate of white nationalism that has too long festered in the American underbelly. Charlottesville became the epicenter of the modern confrontation with America’s dark side that has echoes back to Jefferson’s era.

As you’ll read in the upcoming blogs about both the visit to Monticello and Montpelier, I find it promising that each site is taking clear efforts to look its complicated past square in the face and also has created a seat at the table for the descendants of their respective enslaved populations. We have visited other sites in other states that have turned a blind eye entirely to this part of their story. As goes the Chinese proverb ascribed to Lao Tzu, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

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