Joint Plea of the Hemingses Ladies

Dearest Daddy,

This composition is on the behalf of all the Hemingses of female persuasion. We find a lot of contradictions around our social position that we feel compelled to make plain before you exit this Earth. Being able to be intimate with your whims and personality, we know that you are ambivalent about this system of enslavement and therefore feel that you would donate at least one of your open ears to this plea.

Being a light bright woman does not make our lives right. Bejewel me all you would like with things that form me for the “attentions” of men, but we sorrowfully admit that a man cannot make everything in our world right. We still see our fellow sisters in skin working the fields and yet she can never be treated with this level of dignity you bestow upon us. You dismay at the Native race’s treatment of their women, yet you narrow your scope of fair treatment to only women of your seed. How does my blood, my ancestry, justify the illogical subjection to labor rather than gender alone?

Beyond our gender, we despise the racial term “mulatto.” As one who delights in word choice, I know you have command over the meaning of this word arising from an animal. The mule is a sterile hybrid species that can neither be a horse nor a donkey, but is forever plagued with the loneliness of its own unbefitting path in life. Although I do not feel I am being called an animal, there is something pseudo-biological being fallaciously inferred with that term, now having established the origin.

Therefore, we decree: We blacks and mixed-blacks (or mixed-whites as some prefer to be called) are not a separate species! Can I have my humanity at least, if not my equitable humanity?

As you lie on your bed nearing the end of your full life, Father, we would hope that you could make a bold and progressive move: declare that we women, not just your daughters, deserve respect and fair treatment, no matter what our lineage and ancestry.

Sincerely,
The Hemings Ladies

Questions:
1. How did the law of partus sequitir ventrem (slavehood based on maternal lineage) perhaps complicate Jefferson’s treatment of his daughters?
2. How did society view the mixed-race Americans of the 17th and 18th century? What does white world’s treatment of this group tell us about the role of physical appearance?