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Annette Gordon Reed Biography & Facts

Annette Gordon-Reed (born November 19, 1958) is an American historian and law professor. She is currently the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and a professor of history in the university's Faculty of Arts & Sciences. She is formerly the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gordon-Reed is noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction and 15 other prizes in 2009 for her work on the Hemings family of Monticello. In 2010, she received the National Humanities Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2018, she has served as a trustee of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. She is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Background and education Gordon-Reed was born in Livingston, Texas, to Bettye Jean Gordon and Alfred Gordon. She grew up in Jim Crow Conroe, Texas, and was the first black child in her elementary school. In third grade she became interested in Thomas Jefferson. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1981 and Harvard Law School in 1984, where she was a member of the Harvard Law Review. Marriage and family Gordon-Reed is married to Robert R. Reed, a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, whom she met while at Harvard Law School. She lives on the Upper West Side of New York with her husband and two children, Gordon and Susan. Professional and academic career Gordon-Reed spent her early career as an associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and as counsel to the New York City Board of Corrections. She speaks or moderates at numerous conferences across the country on history and law-related topics. She was previously Wallace Stevens Professor of Law at New York Law School (1992–2010) and Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University, Newark (2007–2010). In 2010, she joined Harvard University with joint appointments in history and law, and as Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2012, she was appointed the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at HLS. In 2014, she was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting professor at Queen's College, University of Oxford. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997) Her first book sparked considerable interest from fellow scholars, as it investigated and analyzed the long-standing historical controversy of whether Thomas Jefferson had a sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered children by her. Most academic historians had accepted the denials of Jefferson descendants and their assertion that the late Peter Carr (a married nephew of Jefferson) was the father. Biographer James Parton adopted this alternative account to rumors about Jefferson's paternity, as did succeeding historians for more than 100 years. As some historians began to reinvestigate Jefferson in the late twentieth century, his defenders responded as if assertions of his paternity were intended to damage his historical reputation, despite the widespread acknowledgement by then of the numerous interracial liaisons in Jefferson's time. In 1974, Fawn M. Brodie wrote the first biography of Jefferson to seriously examine the evidence related to Sally Hemings; she thought the Hemings-Jefferson liaison was likely. Gordon-Reed analyzed the historiography and identified the set of unexamined assumptions that had governed the investigations by many Jefferson scholars. These assumptions were that white people tell the truth, black people lie, slave owners tell the truth, and slaves lie. Gordon-Reed cross-checked the versions of events provided by former Monticello slaves, such as Madison Hemings, who claimed Jefferson as his father, and Isaac Jefferson, who confirmed Thomas Jefferson's paternity of the Hemings children, against documented historical evidence to which they could not have had access. She similarly cross-checked oral traditions among Hemings' descendants against such primary sources as Jefferson's papers and agricultural records. She demonstrated errors made by historians, and noted facts overlooked by the white Jefferson descendants and historians, which contradicted their assertions that one or more of Jefferson's Carr nephews had fathered the children. As the historian Winthrop Jordan had noted, which was also noted by Brodie, historian Dumas Malone's extensive documentation of Jefferson's travels showed that Jefferson was at Monticello during the period of time when Hemings conceived each of her known children, and that she never conceived when he was not there. Gordon-Reed noted that all of Sally Hemings' children were freed. They were the only slave family to gain such freedom, which was consistent with what Madison said Jefferson had promised to his mother, Sally Hemings. Gordon-Reed concluded that Jefferson and Hemings did have a sexual relationship, though she did not try to characterize it. Reprinted in 1999, her new edition of the book has a foreword incorporating the 1998 DNA study. Reception Gordon-Reed "drew on her legal training to apply context and reasonable interpretation to the sparse documentation" and analyzed the historiography as well. The writer Christopher Hitchens in Slate described her analysis as "brilliant." Critics such as John Works and Robert F. Turner of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society have pointed out several transcription errors in Gordon-Reed's first book. Although Gordon-Reed said the errors were a "mistake," Works and Turner have alleged them to be alterations of historical documents. Gordon-Reed's study stimulated a revival of interest in this topic. In 1998 a Y-DNA study was conducted of direct male descendants of the Jefferson male line, Eston Hemings line, and Carrs, as this DNA is passed down virtually unchanged. There was a Y-DNA match between the Jefferson male line and a male descendant of Eston Hemings. Researchers noted that, when added to the body of historical evidence, this strongly suggested Thomas Jefferson was the father of the children. In addition, the DNA analysis conclusively excluded descendants of the Carr line as a match for the Hemings descendant. Neither of the Carr nephews could have been the father of Hemings's children. The findings received national attention, with PBS devoting a lengthy program to the issues. They have stimulated new scholarship. Major groups and historians have re-assessed their evaluation of historical evidence related to this issue. In 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello, announced that its internal study had concluded that Jefferson was likely the father of Eston and all of Hemi.... Discover the Annette Gordon Reed popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Annette Gordon Reed books.