America 250: Thomas Jefferson's descendants wrestle with complicated family legacy
Descendants of America's third president grapple with history and belonging.
Rev. W. Douglas Banks arrived in Virginia by train carrying a hand-drawn family tree, returning to Monticello to fight for what he says is the truth about his lineage.
"I have the DNA in me of an enslaved person and slave owner," Banks said. "I can't do anything about that. But what I do have is a responsibility to do something with that."
Banks has known his entire life that he is a distant great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president who famously wrote that "all men are created equal." He's also known that Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people and fathered children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, one of Banks' great grandmothers.
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In a sit-down interview with ABC News' Senior National Correspondent Steve Osunsami, Banks met Salvatore Pace, one of his white cousins who is a Jefferson Randolph Coolidge descendant, for the first time.
Pace acknowledged that when he first learned Jefferson had fathered children with Hemings, he refused to acknowledge it.
"I idolized Jefferson as a kid," Pace said. "As a young man, it was prominent in so much of my self-identity."
Like many Americans, 49-year-old Pace said he grew up with what he calls a "fairy tale version of America."
Accepting the full story meant confronting not only the country's history, but his own family's.
"It was quite uncomfortable to think about having an ancestor who owned 600 people," he said. "I needed to do some personal reckoning to face the truth about American history and about my family's history."
Banks' journey reckoning with his family legacy was different.
"If I could have had an operation to remove that part of my DNA from my body, I would have done it," he said. "I absolutely hated the fact that Thomas Jefferson's blood ran through me because of how it got there."
"I didn't look at Thomas Jefferson as someone to emulate," Banks added. "I looked at him as a monster."
For generations, descendants of Sally Hemings maintained that Jefferson fathered her children.
Oral histories preserved by Hemings' descendants were later supported by DNA testing published in 1998. While the DNA identified the Jefferson male line rather than Thomas Jefferson specifically, historians cite plantation records, documentary evidence and family histories in saying Jefferson most likely fathered Hemings' children.
In 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation released a statement saying that the "best evidence available suggests the strong likelihood" Jefferson had a long-term relationship with Hemings.
The revelation has divided Jefferson descendants for decades.
While many acknowledge the historical evidence connecting Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, there are some descendants who believe the evidence presented does not prove paternity with absolute certainty and is therefore inconclusive.
"Even when DNA proved it to some, it didn't prove it to all," Banks told ABC News. "There's still, to this moment, people who reject that because they just don't want to accept it."
That debate continues today.
The Monticello Association, the descendants' organization that oversees the Jefferson family cemetery, still limits membership and burial rights to descendants of Jefferson and his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, through their daughters, and voted in 2002 to exclude descendants of Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Lucy O'Shields, the association's president, sent ABC News a statement saying:
"For over 110 years, the Monticello Association has been proud to bring together Thomas Jefferson's descendants to care for, preserve and continue the family graveyard at Monticello," she said in the statement. "As America marks its 250th anniversary, we look forward to honoring this milestone and welcoming all who can establish their lineage."
Pace, who is also a Monticello Association member, supported its policies for years, voting in favor of blocking the admittance of Hemings descendants. He told ABC News it wasn't George Floyd's 2020 murder and the discussions around race that followed that he began to reconsider his position.
"It's hard to admit when you're wrong, but it's the right thing to do," Pace said in an interview with Osunsami.
Pace has formed a Monticello Reconciliation Committee in hopes of convincing other members of the association to bring a new vote to give Hemings descendants membership eligibility and burial rights.
Gayle Jessup White sees the debate from a different perspective.
White became the first Black member of the Monticello Association because she descends from Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, through another branch of the family. She believes that made her membership easier for some descendants to accept.
"I do believe that it is more palatable that I am descended from a different member of the family," White told ABC News. "not through a liaison that he had with a Black woman, an enslaved woman."
Still, she recalled how Black relatives encouraged her to join.
"They said, 'You walk through that door first because you're opening the door for the rest of us,'" she said.
White plans to bury her parents in the Jefferson family cemetery, saying they have every right to rest there.
"I, as a Black person, have every right to be buried at that place of distinction as any white descendant," she said.
She wants visitors to see her parents' names among Jefferson's descendants.
"I want everyone who comes and sees that gravesite to look and say, 'Who are those people?'" she said. "Somewhere on there, it's going to say 'Black.'"
White is now part of the Monticello Association's reconciliation committee, working alongside Pace and other descendants to push for broader recognition of the Hemings family.
"I would like to see America acknowledge its complex history," she said. "There's some good, there's some bad. Forgive themselves for the some good and the some bad, and move forward with a kind heart."
The Road to Reconciliation
Following the interview with ABC News, Sal Pace took Douglas Banks to Monticello and, after spending the day together, brought him to the Jefferson family cemetery. There, he handed Banks his key, which only recognized Jefferson descendants who are Monticello Association members have access to. Although it was temporary, Banks said the experience was meaningful.
"It was like you gave me the keys to the home of my ancestors," Banks told Pace.
Later, Banks embraced the cousin he had just met.
"I've always said family is earned," he said. "I hugged him and said, 'You're my cousin. You're my family.' He didn't have to put that key in my hand. I knew he was trying to do something intentional."
ABC News' Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Halle Toadec contributed to this report.
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