CONNECTING THE DOTS OF HISTORY The Research and Points of View behind "SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN SCANDAL" Thoughts from Executive Producer Craig Anderson, Writer Tina Andrews, Director Charles Haid and Jefferson/Hemings Descendant Julia Jefferson Westerinen For 200 years the story of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has both captured the public's imagination and been the source of heated controversy. The relationship erupted into scandal at the beginning of Jefferson's presidency, when the Richmond Recorder first reported allegations of the affair in 1802. Yet, during his lifetime, the author of the Declaration of Independence never confirmed nor denied that he had fathered several children with Sally Hemings, a slave on his plantation, in the years following his wife's death in 1782. Centuries later, the rumored liaison continues to be the subject of countless articles and books, most notably historian Fawn Brodie's "Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History." Published in 1974, the book ignited a furious debate when it alleged not only the relationship as fact, but as a long and caring relationship that spanned both of Jefferson's terms in office and produced as many as five children. While the story has remained a rich part of their descendants' oral histories for generations, the relationship remained unsubstantiated until 1998 when a DNA study offered the first scientific evidence of a link between descendants of Sally Hemings and the third president of the United States On Sunday, Feb 13th and Wednesday, Feb. 16th, CBS will tell the story of the extraordinary, controversial 38-year relationship in the four-hour mini-series SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN SCANDAL. Sam Neill and Carmen Ejogo star in the drama produced by Peabody Award winning producer Craig Anderson. The mini-series, directed by Charles Haid from a script by Tina Andrews, also stars Diahann Carroll, Mare Winningham and Mario Van Peebles Historical Fiction: "We optioned the rights to Fawn Brodie's book," explains Executive Producer Craig Anderson, "and Tina did extensive research on both Sally Hemings and the life of Thomas Jefferson, but the story nonetheless is historical fiction -- all dramatizations of history blend fact with reasonable conjecture. After all, no one who was around 200 years ago is still around to give us an eyewitness account of what actually happened." As very, little is recorded about Sally Hemings, a common problem in researching black history, a vast amount of information was drawn from oral histories, passed down from generation to generation by her descendants. "Oral history is a rich tradition in the African American culture," explains writer and co-executive producer Tina Andrews. "It is often relied upon for what we won't find in the history books." "I was taught the recorded side of history," explains director Charles Haid. "The African Americans who were slaves for hundreds of years in this country don't have the same kind of recorded history. Yet theirs is just as rich and just as significant. It is very, very important that we examine history from all sides. I think that it's wonderful that this story is being told and that the genesis has come from an African American writer." "Even with the historical records that are available," explains Anderson, "we can't expect to get details of private emotional conflict - - an element crucial to this story and any drama. So to dramatize this story we combined all the available historical research which included a great deal of 'circumstantial evidence,' with reasonable conjecture. Through diligent and conscientious research, we have tried to logically connect the dots as to what may have taken place." The Genesis: Tina Andrews had been researching the story of Sally Hemings since the mid-1980s and credits a bad break in her acting career for getting her started. "I had played Valerie Grant on "Days of Our Lives," explains Tina, "where I had been part of the first interracial relationship depicted on daytime television. When the controversy behind it got too heated, my character -- not his -- was taken off the air. I was very depressed and frustrated about it, and my father said, 'You can change things. You can use your talents to write better roles for African American actresses. As far as interracial relationships go, you should think about doing one the greatest interracial love stories in American history.'" Her father had learned the story of Sally Hemings from a descendant of Hemings' son, Madison, who as it turned out, lived across the street from an Illinois cousin. Tina had heard the story since childhood and was fascinated. But to flesh out a story, she needed more information. Andrews delved into the history books and was shocked by how little information was available. "Back when I started to research the subject, the only available information, pretty much came from Fawn Brodie who had written "The Great Jefferson Taboo," "Jefferson's Unknown Grandchildren" and "Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History." I thought it was an incredible story, and wrote a play called "The Mistress of Monticello." I got a tremendous response when it opened in Chicago in 1985, and everyone said 'What a beautiful story, you should try to make this into a movie.' I tried to get it produced for years, but the response was always the same 'Is it a true story, or are you just sullying the image of a great American icon?'" Her script eventually landed in the hands of Alex Haley, with whom Andrews had worked as an actress in his landmark mini-series, "Roots." "Alex Haley was my mentor," explains Andrews. "It was he who encouraged me to continue digging for information so I could get the story told." In 1998, the script came to the attention of producer Craig Anderson ("The Piano Lesson"), through his development executive Wendy Kram, who had read the script 10 years earlier and loved it. "I liked the fact that the story was told from Sally's point of view," explains Anderson, "because while it teaches us about someone we know very little about, it also sheds new light on the life of Thomas Jefferson. He was an enormously complicated man, and through his relationship with Sally a different side of him emerges. It's one we've never really seen before and one that is infinitely more interesting than the one we learned of in school." He continues: "Jefferson was an- extraordinarily brilliant man -- an inventor, a statesman and one of the chief architects of our country. But he was also a man with human frailties, a great man with ordinary weaknesses. Here was the man who as author of the Declaration of Independence wrote 'all men are created equal,' yet he owned slaves. He was deeply involved with a mulatto woman, who became the mother of several of his children, yet he openly condemned racial amalgamation. He is a remarkable example of the complexities and contradictions within all of us - and it's those contradictions I wanted to explore." The Love Story "I saw this story as one about two people who found each other, fell in love and became victims of the times in which they lived," says Andrews. Sally Hemings was half-sister to Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles, a woman he loved deeply and whose death he still mourned when he was reacquainted with Sally in Paris. "I can understand why Jefferson would have been attracted to her. He was unattached, Sally was beautiful and bore a striking resemblance to the woman he had adored." Explains Andrews: "Sally Hemings was only one quarter black - her father John Wayles, was also father to Martha Wayles Jefferson. Both Sally and her mother, Betty Hemings, were owned by Wayles and given to Jefferson when he married Martha." "The fact that they were together for almost 40 years, and remained so despite extraordinary circumstances," adds Anderson, "makes me want to believe that there was some tenderness and emotion involved. When their relationship was exposed in the press, it caused an incredible scandal that threatened Jefferson's political life Yet, their relationship survived despite it. Eston Hemings, the source of the DNA link, was born six years after the scandal broke. What other way to explain such a longstanding commitment than to attribute it to a deep and abiding mutual affection.” It was the human drama that attracted director Charles Haid to the project as well: "This story is not about slavery, it's not about politics, it's a story about the human and spiritual struggle between people.” Kismet!: "We had scheduled a meeting to pitch the project to CBS," explains Tina, "for Tuesday, Nov. 10, 1998. Over the weekend the DNA story broke - it was kismet! The DNA evidence provided the verification we needed -- it showed that all the historians who had disavowed the story were wrong, and that the oral histories, so often discounted, had been right all along. For so long our oral history has been dismissed, and very often, that is all we have had, as African Americans, to hold onto. It was such a wonderful validation of the importance of oral history. CBS not only decided to do the movie, they wanted to expand it to a four-hour mini-series." The Research To expand the story, more research was required.- So, Tina went back to work and referenced another 17-18 books that had been published since she had done her initial research. Furthermore, she embarked on a quest to talk to as many Jefferson/Hemings descendants as she could find. The Monticello Association's "Getting Word Project" was of enormous help to Tina in locating many descendants scattered all over the country. "They had been working on finding anyone who was descended from a slave at Monticello," explains Tina "and were able to give me addresses and phone numbers of many of Sally's descendants." Then, in May of 1999, the Monticello Association invited, for the first time, Hemings descendants to join Jefferson descendants at their annual meeting. "I met over 35 descendants," explains the writer, "from three different branches of the family. It was amazing, for all these years, these people had never known one another, and now they were meeting for the first time and finding they had all these common threads and stories. Their stories were invaluable, and gave me just what I needed to further develop the story and Sally's character." DNA Results - An Astounding Relation: "It wasn't until 1976 that I found out I was related to Thomas Jefferson," explains descendant Julia Jefferson Westerinen, "when historian Fawn Brodie discovered the relationship." Westerinen's aunt had read Brodie's book, "Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History" and noticed several similarities in the names mentioned in the book to those in her own family. She contacted the author. "Fawn came to New York," continues Julia," and interviewed us for days. After doing more research, she told us that we were related to Thomas Jefferson directly through Sally Hemings. We knew that my great-great grandfather was E.H. Jefferson - it was in our genealogy, but she discovered that E.H. Jefferson was Eston Flemings, Sally's son by Jefferson." Twenty years later, in the summer of 1998, the family was contacted and asked if they would donate blood for a study being done to trace Jefferson and Hemings' lineage. As the blood had to come from an uninterrupted male line, her brother's blood was used. "I had forgotten all about it," explains Julia, "when on the last day of October I received a call from U.S. News & World Report. They told me the DNA proved that I was actually related by blood to Thomas Jefferson. I didn't know what to think, but to be directly connected to such remarkable people was astounding. What is very strange is the fact that our DNA is the only one that proved out. They haven't found an unbroken male succession in the Madison Hemings or Thomas Woodson lines yet. It doesn't mean that they aren't related by any means, but it is ironic that it was a white family that proved the relationship." "The DNA results confirmed what our family had already known," explains William Dalton, a descendant of Madison Hemings. "It has been part of our oral family history for over 200 years," he adds. "My cousin has traced our roots back by both birth and death certificates to Sally Hemings, but I can't prove our DNA linkage to Jefferson because you need a line of consecutive males. But our ancestor, Madison, was said to be the spitting image of him!" Westerinen is delighted her ancestor's story is finally being told. "I was a history major in school," she continues, "and never had I come across Sally's name in any of my readings. She was just an invisible person, but she must have been a remarkable woman to capture such a genius as Thomas Jefferson and have his devotion for 38.years. It is so wonderful that people will now learn who she was." Separating Fact From Fiction Even with all the new information, Anderson and Andrews still struggled with putting Sally in historical context. While much is known about Jefferson the politician, far less is known about him as a man, and even less about the woman with whom he spent more than 38 years of his life. "We know that Sally gave birth to her first child, Tom, shortly after her return from Paris with Jefferson," explains Andrews. "We also know that despite the fact that Jefferson spent many months at a time away from Monticello, as secretary of state, vice president and president, Sally only gave birth to her other children nine months after he was on the plantation. We know this because slaves were worth money, and the farm books at Monticello noted the birth dates and names of all of Sally's children (except her first, as his birth precipitated the records)." "We also know, continued Andrews, that Sally's mother, Betty, was the result of a white sea captain and an African woman on her way to being enslaved and that Sally's father was John Wayles, her mother's slave master. Wayles was also the father of Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles. When Jefferson married Martha, he inherited over a hundred of her father's slaves, which included the Hemings family." "I also relied heavily on information written about Thomas Jefferson," explains Tina "We have records and letters that show where he was every day. So, I kept Sally's story within the context of where he was. Where I couldn't find historical references, I had to connect the dramatic dots. For instance, we know that Sally was in Paris with Jefferson, and that he went to Versailles on many occasions If he brought his daughters with him there would be a ladies maid in attendance. So, in mind who would be in attendance? Sally Hemings." The descendants helped Tina formulate Sally's personality and character. "I show Sally helping slave runaways escape, for example," explains Tina "Whether or not she actually assisted runaways is unknown, but I do know that her son, Tom, did after he left Monticello. Six of his 11 children became conductors on the Underground Railroad. So I made the assumption that this influence had to come from somewhere, and logically thought it had come from his mother. I also present Sally as someone who secretly taught other slaves how to read. This came to me because so many of Madison's descendants became teachers and professors." By far Tina's most daunting challenge was in creating the dialogue for Thomas Jefferson. "I didn't want to just put any words in the mouth of this great man," explains Tina. "But, thanks to his papers and his autobiography, I was able to get a better sense of the way he spoke. I also made use of the many letters he wrote to friends and family. In some cases, I was able to construct his dialogue with actual quotes. I noticed that he, like many writers, often uses the same phrase when writing to different people. When it was appropriate, I was able to incorporate the phrase into the script." "Anytime you take actual historical events and known figures and place them in a dramatic context, you walk a fine line," explains Anderson. "You have a responsibility to be as accurate as possible, while at the same time you have a responsibility to present an entertaining drama. Dramatizing history is a wonderful way to make it come alive, and hopefully you are able to interest your audience enough to inspire them to learn more about it. The danger, of course, is that often people accept what is presented in the mass media as fact, even if you make it clear that it is fiction. We tried very hard to maintain our historical accuracy with regard to Jefferson and his place in history, while at the same time, try to imagine who he might have been as a man." Tina found that when she stopped thinking of Jefferson in his official capacity, and instead, began to think about him as a man relating to a woman, "the sentences just flowed!" Tackling the tough issues: "It's a welcome coincidence that our mini-series will air during Black History Month," notes Anderson. "The movie tackles important, delicate issues with regard to race. In addition to portraying a deeply conflicted Jefferson on the issue of slavery, we also have scenes depicting many of the indignities the slaves suffered. We also see how Sally's brother, James, an educated, bilingual, skilled chef was unable to thrive -- or even survive -- in the white world after he obtained his freedom." "There was an enormous amount of conflict in Jefferson regarding slavery," explains director Charles Haid. "In our story Sally Hemings is the female protagonist and confronts those issues." "I can imagine," explains Tina, "how hard it would have been for Sally to have been 'free' in Paris, and then to have returned to Monticello as a slave. I think it would have been hard for her not to have thought 'how can you be with me and not do more about my people.' So, I have her challenge him on those points in the movie, even if in reality she might not have dared. As for Jefferson, he never fully articulated his stance on slavery, so I couldn't do it for him." "One of the many questions raised," notes Anderson, "is how Jefferson could have been in love with a black slave, while at the same time, continue to own slaves, and as president do nothing to end it. His ambiguity illuminates what an enormously complex and divisive issue slavery was. It had far greater implications than one man could change. It would take another hundred years before slavery was abolished in this country, and even that didn't end racial bias or inequality. Those are issues we still struggle with today, 200 years later." "Seeing members of my race dressed and acting like our slave ancestors," explains Tina, "was an overwhelming experience, and believe me I had my share of crying jags. It was not all that long ago that we were enslaved, and I'm struck by how far we have come." In the End .... "This story," explains Tina, "is of a man and a woman, who despite their vast cultural differences, despite the adversity they faced and the secrecy they were forced to maintain, remained devoted to each other. My hope is that the movie will further the dialogue between the races, that the sons and daughters of slaves and the sons and daughters of slave owners will come together and talk honestly about the past -- accept it, learn from it and grow closer together." "I hope this movie engages people enough to stir debate," adds Anderson. It has been said many times, 'exploring our past is always the best way to understand our present.' One of the things I find so fascinating in historical pieces is that although times change and circumstances change, human behavior does not. Perhaps in understanding that we are all intertwined, we will discover we are more alike than we are different. After all, a white family provided the DNA that proved the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings, and they are just as proud of their African American heritage as they are of their connection to an American icon. That should be a lesson to all of us."