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Article milestones Date Process Result September 11, 2014 Good article nominee Listed
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " Did you know?" column on September 16, 2014. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Sally Hemings was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by President Thomas Jefferson, and had a long-term relationship and six children with him?

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Please Change “owned” by Thomas Jefferson to “enslaved” by Thomas Jefferson Mayflower8 ( talk) 02:14, 24 January 2024 (UTC) reply

 Not done: I apologize -- I agree the wording is harsh and jarring as of currently, assuming this is why you request the change, but I can't say for sure whether or not it should be changed.

Hemings was already enslaved, and rather inherited by Thomas Jefferson, so adding this ambiguity seems unnecessary.

Yes, it is not morally right to possess someone. But the laws during the time period supplied Thomas Jefferson with "ownership" of a person who was considered "property" in this case. Thus, I don't believe the wording is misleading, albeit gross.

Furthermore, changing the phrasing may be somewhat euphemistic. On Wikipedia, we should be open to discussing harsh realities of the past.

Thank you for your request. If you'd like to discuss this more to argue your side, or I am misunderstanding the context, feel free to reply once more and we can consider reopening the request.

— Urro ^{talk edits}

17:11, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Why are there no Images of Sally Hemmings? There are books and Movies and many Illustrations of her that should be include in this article. 96.39.171.191 ( talk) 19:47, 27 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Previous discussion is at Talk:Sally Hemings/Archive 2 § Caricature. I wonder whether an abstract representation would be acceptable, such as the silhouette installation at Monticello. Hameltion ( talk | contribs) 01:38, 1 February 2024 (UTC) reply

We're all very aware that a 14 year old enslaved child had no ability to say no to her enslaver. This was not a relationship, it was consistent and repeated rape of a child. Jefferson began raping Sally Hemming at the age of 14 in Paris. There I fixed it for you. 2601:C4:C780:21F0:B41A:FA5D:9B0C:3FCB ( talk) 00:56, 13 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Please replace 'an enslaved woman with one-quarter African ancestry' with 'an enslaved black woman with three-quarter European ancestry'. This is important both for accuracy of her individual story and for clearly illustrating the way her story fits into American history and culture.

By American cultural standards at the time -- and by American cultural standards now -- Hemings was a black woman. Whether you believe she mothered children by Jefferson or by one of his relatives, her being a black woman is an foundational part of her life story.

It indicates why she was in the position to be taken advantage of by her enslaver (and/or his relative(s). It also highlights that her situation was symptomatic of the common practice of slave-owning men in America at the time having relations with enslaved black women. The context this links to on the practices of American slaveholders and how enslaved black Americans were treated is necessary to note. TiedTie ( talk) 21:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC) reply

As stated in the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Societies Report of the Scholars Commission, "Dr. Foster cooperated fully in our enquiry and has readily acknowledged that the DNA tests do not suggest that Thomas Jefferson was Eston's father as opposed to someone like his younger brother Randolph or one of Randolph's sons. Indeed, every knowledgeable authority we have consulted, including other scientists who conducted the tests, has denied that these tests could possibly have distinguished among the male members of the Jefferson family in determining the paternity of Eston Hemmings." The Dr. Foster in the quote being the man who administered the original DNA test which this article, and all other scholarly sources, cite as being the primary proof of Eston's paternity.

The claims that Jefferson began an affair with Hemmings in Paris are also disputed in the report, on the grounds that they originate from an interview with Hemmings second youngest son, Madison, and his 1873 interview with a "highly partisan" newspaper editor. The Scholars Report states that there are many problems with Madison's story, such as the fact that Madison could not have personally been witness to the information in the report and cites no source for his claims, as well as the fact that many unusual words in the interview match an 1802 political smear article written about Jefferson by a disreputable reporter.

There are many more claims in the Scholars Report which make a compelling case for casting the paternity of Eston Hemmings into doubt, and I will not repeat them all here. Yet, in spite of this scholarly disagreement on the topic, the opening of this article seems highly biased in favor of the belief that there is generally a scholarly consensus on the matter in favor, not just of the affair and not just of Jefferson being the father of Eston, but in fact of his being the father of many more children by Hemmings. The Report of the Scholars commission is placed at the very end of the introduction to the article, which I contend leads the uninformed reader to making a rash conclusion before they are even aware of its existence. Though I will not be so antagonistic as to make a hasty edit, I call for a review of the wording of this article and hope that moderators will eliminate any potential bias found herein, as well as subsequently reword the introduction so as to present a balanced view of the controversy which is not in danger of leading the general public into a dangerous assumption which lacks the necessary scholarly support. Procopius00 ( talk) 23:01, 16 April 2024 (UTC) reply