Who Is Black?

The determination of who was a black person in Jefferson's time was more complicated than I knew. It was something like determining who was a Jew in Hitler's Germany. According to the law in Germany, if you had three or four Jewish grandparents, you were a Jew. If you had only one Jewish grandparent, you were not a Jew.  And if you had two, you were a half-Jew and eligible to serve in the German army--about 100,000 Jews did serve in the army, probably hoping to win a degree of safety for their families.

In Jefferson's Virginia, if you were more than 75% white, you were legally white. Sally Hemings' children were legally white. They were also slaves because their mother was enslaved. I don't know if anyone admitted this might be a problem. It wasn't up for discussion. Jefferson, although obviously a racist, helped his Hemings children settle in the North, where several of them lived out their lives as whites, and he freed many of the blacker Hemings family to earn livings in trades they had learned. In general Jefferson tried to keep black families together, but he died heavily in debt. His possessions had to be sold to pay what he owed, and the usual tragedies took place, mothers separated from young children and so on.