As I wrote my post on Abigail Adams, patriotism, and feminism last Thursday, it reminded me of another reason why I don't fall all over myself to celebrate "independence" day. Back in March, I heard Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, read from the book and talk about law. Hands down, it was the best lit event I attended as part of my MFA program, if not ever.

We all know the background story: Thomas Jefferson, wielding a pen, blows apart the relationship between Britain and its American colonies, eloquently extolling freedom and equality. Except that of course he owned slaves. And he had a long-term relationship with one of those slaves, Sally Hemings, with whom he had several children. And then those children were denied their heritage, not to mention remained stripped of their equal rights for many generations.

Gordon-Reed's examination of the life of Sally Hemings and her family is long overdue. As she told the New York Times , “I wanted to tell the story of this family in a way not done before” so that readers can “see slave people as individuals... Robert, James, Elizabeth and Sally are not concepts but people.” Of course, at the Declaration of Independence, Sally, saddled with the double burden of being female and black (although her own father was a slave owner, as well as the father of Jefferson's wife), was not really considered a person, so therefore the new nation did not see the need to treat her as one as it sought to expand liberties and rights to other classes of individuals.

Last year, Anxious Black Woman contemplated Sally Hemings's legacy at Diary of an Anxious Black Woman after viewing several TV shows and films about her life. She concluded:

At the end of it all, who gets to speak for Sally Hemings? And, can she speak at all, cutting across the historical divide, if we wanted to listen, really listen, to her story? Whether or not we want to reduce her life just to the connection she had to Thomas Jefferson, and whether or not we want to reduce this story to one of "love" or "rape," we may want to place Sally Hemings in the larger context of enslaved women's history as a whole. The [PBS] documentary, Jefferson's Blood, reveals that only three things exist in the historical record that are linked back to Sally Hemings:

1. A Bell (used to summon her when she was being called to serve).
2. Her Slave Price (listed as $50 in Thomas Jefferson's will).
3. Her Descendants (one of whose DNA would later prove in 1998 that Jefferson, indeed, had sexual relations with her - as her descendants already knew, as those of us with similar ancestry already know).

These three items should speak loudly enough for Sally Hemings. And those of us who know how to listen can readily bridge the gaps in the silences.

At Scandalous Women, Elizabeth Kerri Mahon examines historical and contemporary reactions to the idea that the great Jefferson would have sex with a "quadroon", first reported in 1802, but widely dismissed by the white establishment:

Fawn Brodie deserves a certain amount of credit for reviving the story with her biography of Thomas Jefferson that was published in 1974. Before this the rumors had been dismissed as just ugly campaign propaganda. One of Sally Hemingses sons Madison Hemings gave an interview to a reporter for the Pike County Reporter in Ohio in 1873 in which he stated that his mother, was in his words, Thomas Jefferson’s concubine. Critics and non-believers state that it would have been impossible for Jefferson to have slept with Sally Hemings given his feelings about blacks, he considered them to be inferior in everyway. And although he hated the idea of slavery, the only slaves that he freed upon his death were his two youngest sons by Sally, Eston and Madison, Sally’s nephew, Burton Corbett, who had worked as his valet, and two other nephews of Hemings. He also petitioned the courts to allow Eston and Madison Hemings to continue to live in Virginia despite a law that freed slaves had to leave the state.

So again, when I think about Sally Hemings (and Abigail Adams) I wonder why I should celebrate the 4th of July. If we really want a day to celebrate freedom, we should look more closely at a date when the vast majority of Americans were finally recognized as equals: July 2. That is the day that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was only a start, but I think we should be shooting off fireworks and eating cheeseburgers and celebrating the first major steps America took to really implement the concept that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Suzanne also blogs at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants. Her first book, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, is about unusual things to see and do in NYC. She is serious about celebrating Independence Day on July 2.