In 2015, Gayle Jessup White, an award-winning TV journalist, found out she was related to Thomas Jefferson.
“I talked to my sister… And she told me something that stuck with me… She found out through our great- aunt Peachy, who I had never met, who said that we were related to Thomas Jefferson through one of his great-great-grandsons and a woman named Rachel Robinson,” White said in an interview with South Bound.
A DNA test later, Gayle Jessup White’s perception of her family was changed forever. As a Jefferson Studies Fellow, White searched painstakingly through documents, photos, and DNA evidence to find the truth about her family. In 2016, she became Monticello’s first community engagement officer following her new-found family connections.
Gayle Jessup White and Andrew M. Davenport, both historians and descendants of Thomas Jefferson, are coming to the Quick Center on February 12th at 8 PM for their Open Visions Forum: “A Report from Monticello: Restoring African American Narratives to Thomas Jefferson’s Plantation.”
The stories of Jefferson’s African-American descendants were ignored for generations. Getting Word, an oral history archive begun at Monticello, brings the stories, lives, and achievements of African American families at Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia plantation back into the public consciousness.
Andrew M. Davenport is a writer, editor, and teacher who is currently pursuing his Doctorate in U.S. History at Georgetown, where he is studying slavery and its impact in the United States and beyond. Davenport researched Getting Word while he was a Robert H. Smith Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies in July 2017. He was recently an adjunct professor for African American Art History at Fairfield University.
“The research that has come out of the 25 years of Getting Word’s existence has in many ways been the invisible hand behind the visitor experience at Monticello, the famed plantation owned by Jefferson, where about 400 enslaved laborers worked at one point in their lives,” Davenport said in his 2018 Smithsonian article.
“I walk along Mulberry Row where my ancestors were enslaved, I embrace that, and I feel I belong here,” Jessup White said, “I’m buoyed by the work we’re doing here; it’s significant, country-changing work.”
Now more than ever, it is important to listen to the voices of the past and learn from our country’s history in order to find our best future.
Student tickets for the 8 PM event on February 12th are available at the Quick Center Box Office and all other tickets are available online. To learn more, visit http://quickcenter.fairfield.edu/season-calendar/lectures/monticello.html.