C-Span 3 aired today the news conference launch of a thoroughly researched but largely ignored book disputing the narrative that Thomas Jefferson had children by a slave-mistress.
The C-Span program represented a rare occasion in which prominent U.S. news media have given attention to the book, The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission, which was released September 1 at the National Press Club in Washington.
The C-Span program showed the 90-minute news conference in full, and featured the editor of the volume, Robert Turner, a history professor at the University of Virginia.
Turner headed a commission of Jefferson scholars, which was organized in 2000 by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society to explore claims about Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings.
Turner at the news conference reviewed a welter of evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, that points away from Jefferson’s paternity.
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