For years, Monticello has researched and cultivated historical information on slavery and African-American life at Thomas Jefferson’s plantation.
The information has long been available through Monticello’s website, tours and even on a mobile app.
But now, with the help of two recent hires who have their own personal connections with the history of Monticello, these stories at Jefferson’s estate will be introduced to the public in new ways.
And it’s information that those at Monticello believe is just as important to the public now as it ever was.
Gayle Jessup White and Niya Bates have both come on board at Monticello as the new, and first, community outreach officer and public historian of slavery and African-American life, respectively.
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Their main duties so far have been to collect all the existing information on slavery and black history at Monticello and bring it to the community — from regionally to globally — in new ways. White and Bates also plan to engage with the public to determine how they can better bring the stories of Monticello’s history to them.
“I think they’re terrific additions to the staff to really help us engage a national and global audience in the dialogue with Jefferson’s world and with his ideas,” said Leslie Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, “and bring history forward with wonderful stories that Monticello is uniquely positioned to tell about Jefferson, about his plantation and about the people who made his life possible.”
White, a former broadcast journalist and Jefferson Studies fellow, said her background will help her be able to “collect stories” and input from the community.
“I like to hear people’s ideas,” she said. “So a lot of what I’ll be doing is exactly that — collecting ideas, sharing them, helping to develop programs here that serve the community, communicating what Monticello has to offer everyone.”
Bates is a Charlottesville native who earned both her undergraduate degree in African-American studies and her master’s degree in architectural history and historic preservation at the University of Virginia. She’s been a longtime attendee of Monticello and said she hopes to attract more people to the historic site.
“I’m excited to be such a young person entrusted with such a large responsibility, and I hope that that resonates with other young people in Charlottesville and that hopefully inspires them to come here and to see what we’re doing,” Bates, 26, said.
“What’s wonderful about this, for both of us, is that we can shape this into what the community says its needs are and how we can best serve the community and Monticello,” White added. “We have the opportunity to create something new.”
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Both White and Bates have their own historical connections to Monticello and the area.
White has known for years she is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson’s family through her family’s oral history and research she’s been able to do with the help of Monticello. But it wasn’t until recently that she was able to confirm it with DNA testing.
“When it was confirmed through DNA, I felt that my family had always known,” she said. “It confirmed for me what we had always believed, so it was exciting to have it confirmed, but there was no doubt. I didn’t doubt the family history.”
But White was most shocked to find she is also a descendant of Sally Hemings.
Hemings, a slave at Monticello, is believed by some to have had children with Jefferson, though no definitive proof of that is known.
She said the news that Hemings’ brother Peter Hemings is a distant grandfather was much more surprising than learning she was a descendant of Jefferson.
“The Hemings family is so important in the fabric of America’s history, so to be associated with Hemings, to be a descendant from the Hemings family for me is as thrilling as being descended from Thomas Jefferson — maybe more so,” White said.
And Bates has learned through research that her own family is connected to John Hartwell Cocke at Bremo, a plantation estate in Fluvanna County, adding that there was a friendship between him and Jefferson.
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The history at Monticello of slavery and African-American life is something that White and Bates — and Bowman — say they believe is crucial in the present-day conversations on race in the Unites States.
“Race continues to be an issue of such magnitude,” White said. “When I say magnitude, I mean a burdensome one in the United States of America, and we are well positioned to have that discussion. We have experience in researching what race has meant to America, and the damage that racism has done to America.”
She added that understanding America’s history and “the blemish of enslavement” — and how it has affected individuals and the nation — is necessary to moving forward.
“We’re fully aware of sort of all the nuanced details of slavery, all the gross, ugly details of slavery and how those things have sort of created an environment where 150 years later these conversations on race and how people identify themselves still is relevant,” Bates said.
She added that they’re able to communicate the “breadth of racism in America” at Monticello because it is rooted in slavery, a “system based on racism.”
“Then, sort of everything that we’ve had since then with Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, mass incarceration, police brutality, things of those nature that are sort of extensions of social paradigms that were created during slavery,” Bates said.
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Bowman said Monticello is an “essential place” to look at the nation’s past and “the vision of Jefferson’s words and the reality that we haven’t yet totally realized them.”
I think it’s a great place to reflect on where we are in our society and what our ideals are and where we are on that journey,” Bowman said.
“I think Niya and Gayle can help us move those stories beyond the academic realm and into the guest experience, and to help our community become more aware of what we’re doing up at Monticello and how it really matters to the public narrative,” she said.
White and Bates are attending the NAACP national convention, which began Saturday and runs until Wednesday in Cincinnati.
“That will be a great experience for us, but also learning what other people are doing to address the present conversations and things that are going on in America dealing with race and legacy of slavery,” Bates said.
And on Sept. 17, in a partnership with UVa, Monticello will host a public summit on “Memory, Mourning, Mobilization: Legacies of Slavery and Freedom in America” as the capstone of a multi-day event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The September event is part of the Human/Ties series and will feature historians, artists, activists and cultural leaders, as well as descendants of people once enslaved at Monticello. It will explore how the history of slavery in the United States shapes contemporary issues of race, citizenship and equality.