About a week ago a friend forwarded an article from
the Washington Post, “For decades they hid Jefferson’s relationship with
her. Now Monticello is making room for Sally Hemings.”
I threw my head back and laughed, glad that I could now. For years, I couldn’t.
Almost 40 years ago I developed a one-woman show about
Sally Hemings. A close friend, Saundra Franks, had developed a piece on Harriet
Tubman and I copied her initiative. It appealed on several levels—exploring a
Black woman’s life, creating a vehicle that showcased my acting range, and control.
An old boy friend labeled me a control
freak. I called him a liar but he was probably right. Having my own show,
something that I could market without waiting for someone to cast me was
equally as important as the creative aspect. I started to search for someone
whose life I might want to recreate.
A friend suggested Sally Hemings. I had never heard of
her. But my friend said her name off-handedly, like I was supposed to know who
she was so I didn’t confess my ignorance. This was pre-Internet so I went to
the library. What I discovered fascinated me—a slave who moved from Virginia to
Paris and back. What did that feel like—both the going and the coming home? Did she fit in either world? And what did Sally, a slave and Jefferson's
dead wife’s half sister, and Jefferson, one of the most dynamic men of the 18th
century, share? I wanted to explore that, wanted my one-woman show to be about
her.
Sally was a bitch to develop. The few Jefferson
historians who mentioned Sally denied that she’d had an intimate relationship
with the President. Like Jefferson’s oldest daughter Martha, they claimed
Jefferson’s nephews Samuel or Peter Carr, or both, fathered Sally’s children. What
was written about her could be summarized in one page. There was no Sally
Hemings’ story. I’d have to invent her life.
Finally I had a script, one that I wrote after my
attempts to collaborate with writers failed. I got a grant from the Atlanta
Arts Council to produce it, and landed my first gig. I started to fantasize.
Soon I’d be booked solid like my friend for most of February and March (Black
and Women’s History months). Make enough during those two months so I could
coast between acting jobs and not have to do temp work. It was a great script but
life didn’t follow it. I couldn’t get a booking agent. Everyone I contacted,
and I contacted plenty, had the more or less the same response—what proof is
there that this relationship existed? I knew Sally was controversial. Knew most
historians didn’t agree with Professor Fawn Brodie who methodically documented
Jefferson’s relationship with Sally in her biography Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. But I didn’t think controversial
meant un-bookable. If anything I thought there would be more interest, you know
salacious and all. But people weren’t ready to be salacious about Jefferson,
one of the founding fathers.
Doing Sally of
Monticello stretched me, in a multiplicity of ways. I wasn’t scholarly when
I undertook the project but became an excellent researcher. I’d never written a
play. I’d never done marketing. As an actor, I had a dream role, a character
that ages 15 to 56. I learned plenty but didn’t get many bookings and that
pissed me off, for years. So I was
glad that I could laugh. No longer angry that I’d been ahead of the curve but
amused by it.
