Historians In Awe Over Discovery At Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Property

Remembering The Past

In 2016, Monticello, with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Virginia, hosted a public race summit entitled, Memory, Mourning, Mobilization: Legacies of Slavery and Freedom in America. It had academics like Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Annette Gordon-Reed, and artists such as Nikki Giovanni, activists like Bree Newsome, all descendants of Monticello’s enslaved family and community members.

Here, they discussed the importance of Monticello, what it means to be a descendant of its enslaved people, and the role slavery played in the building of America.