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Books by Wilson Jeremiah Moses
Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925
(1988) /
The Wings of Ethiopia
(1990)
Alexander
Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (1992) /
Destiny & Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898 (1992)
Black
Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a
Religious Myth (1993)
Liberian Dreams: Back-to-Africa Narratives from the 1850s
/
Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History
(2002)
Creative Conflict in African American Thought (2004)
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Uncle
Jeff and His Contempos
By Wilson J. Moses
I have been laboring to improve my French by
painfully struggling with Condorcet's essay against slavery.
His and other discourses in that genre—written
by
Herder,
Kant,
Hume,
Samuel Johnson, and
Adam Smith—sent
Thomas Jefferson into paroxysms of neurotic self-justification.
True enough, all of the above manifested
varying degrees of racism or racial condescension, but none of
them believed that "black inferiority" could justify
slavery or the oppression of the blacks, or the exclusion of
them from the human family. Only Jefferson specifically
attributed to Negroes the prurient instincts of an ape, while
breeding mulattoes. Only Jefferson advocated extending
slavery into the territories acquired by the
Louisiana Purchase.
As late as the 1820s!
Another subject: You are aware that Du Bois
wrote fairy tale vignettes, based on Biblical, Germanic, and
classical, mythology. These appeared in
Darkwater,
The Crisis, and
The Souls of Black Folk.
This morning I was struggling with the Contes
of Charles Perrault and a version of Le Roman do
Renart, designed for the lycee level. Andre
Norton published a translation the trial of
Reynard the Fox for
children, which I read as a kid in Detroit. I have a
long-standing interest in European fairy tales, including
Mallory's Morte d'Arthur.
I have been reading Lessing's 1759 essay on
fables and his translations into German of Aesop (a Negro?)
yesterday morning. I don't know what influences Lessing
might have had on the Grimm Brothers. I think Lessing must
have influenced people like
Leo Frobenius, an important German
student of African myths and legends around 1900.
Senghor and
Cesaire say the French negritude
poets were fascinated by Frobenius' work, when it was finally
translated into French. Du Bois read Frobenius in German, and
Frobenius was a major influence on his book
The Negro
(1915),
Black Folk, Then and Now (1939, and
The World and Africa (1946), Du Bois writes of the influences of
Richard Wagner on himself in his
Autobiography.
As Du Bois did, I have read some of Wagner's
librettos in German, and have found that Wagner's experiments
with archaic poetic diction, like Du Bois's were thrilling.
I believe I have said elsewhere that Du Bois's story, "The
Coming of John" is based on (and makes direct references
to), Wagner's opera Lohengrin, which is a version of the
Hansel and Gretel myth. Lohengrin is the version of
the warrior caste, and "Hansel und Gretel" represents
a version that survived among the peasantry. But
there are other versions of the myth, discovered by the
Grimm
Brothers.
I intend to see which West African fairy
tales Frobenius might have found that are similar to "Hansel
und Gretel." The Grimm brothers found a West African
variant of Snow White, but the main character in their version
is neither white, nor a woman. He is a beautiful
black prince, with a shining star on his forehead. (Biblical
cognate?)
The
Grimm
Brothers, unlike Jefferson,
believed that all human beings were united by the same
capacities when it came to literary expression. As did Herder,
they rejected Jefferson's sneaky hypothesis that we are a link
between the human and the orangutan.
Gobineau, although he is
remembered only for his Anti-Semitism, believed that the Negro
was artistically equal to other races and attributed the
artistic triumphs of Egyptian civilization to mulaticization.
Several authors of the New Negro Movement recognized the
usefulness of Gobineau to their agenda, as did Senghor, even as
late as the 1960s.
Wilson Moses, the product of home
schooling, was introduced to European literary and intellectual
history by his mother, Ida Mae Johnson Moses, a self-educated,
proletarian intellectual. The ideas above are more fully
developed in
Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, published by
Penn State Press, and others in Afrotopia and still others in Creative Conflict, both
of the latter published by Cambridge University Press. See
also: http://php.scripts.psu.edu/dept/history/faculty/mosesWilson.php
posted 21 August 2005
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Report of the Research Committee
on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Thomas Jefferson Foundation
January 2000
Conclusions
Based on the examination of
currently available primary and secondary documentary evidence, the oral
histories of descendants of Monticello's African-American community,
recent scientific studies, and the guidance of individual members of
Monticello's Advisory Committee for the Robert H. Smith International
Center for Jefferson Studies and Advisory Committee on African-American
Interpretation, the Research Committee has reached the following
conclusions:
Dr. Foster's DNA study was
conducted in a manner that meets the standards of the scientific
community, and its scientific results are valid.
The DNA study, combined with
multiple strands of currently available documentary and statistical
evidence, indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered
Eston Hemings, and that he most likely was the father of all six of
Sally Hemings's children appearing in Jefferson's records. Those
children are Harriet, who died in infancy; Beverly; an unnamed daughter
who died in infancy; Harriet; Madison; and Eston.
Many aspects of this likely
relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson are, and may
remain, unclear, such as the nature of the relationship, the existence
and longevity of Sally Hemings's first child, and the identity of Thomas
C. Woodson.
The implications of the
relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson should be
explored and used to enrich the understanding and interpretation of
Jefferson and the entire Monticello community.—Monticello
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Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account
Thomas Jefferson (April 13,
1743 – July 4, 1826) was the principal
author of the
Declaration of Independence (1776) and
the
Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom
(1777), the
third
President of the United States
(1801–1809) and founder of the
University of Virginia (1819). He was
an influential
Founding Father and an exponent of
Jeffersonian democracy.
Sarah
"Sally" Hemings (Shadwell,
Albemarle County, Virginia, circa
1773 –
Charlottesville, Virginia, 1835) was a
mixed-race
slave owned by
President
Thomas Jefferson through inheritance
from his wife. She was the
half-sister of Jefferson's wife,
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father
John Wayles. She was notable because most historians now believe
that the widower Jefferson had six children with her, and maintained an
extended relationship for 38 years until his death. When Jefferson's
relationship and children were reported in 1802, there was sensational
coverage for a time, but Jefferson remained silent on the issue. Four
Hemings-Jefferson children survived to adulthood. He let two "escape" in
1822 at the age of 21 and freed the younger two in his will in 1826.
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Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
By Annette Gordon-Reed
Attorney Gordon-Reed (law, New York
Law Sch.) presents a lawyer's analysis of the evidence for and against
the proposition that Jefferson was the father of several children born
to his household slave Sally Hemings. Gordon-Reed is not concerned with
Jefferson and Hemings as much as she is with how Jefferson's defenders
have dealt with the evidence about the case. Her book takes aim at such
noteworthy biographers as Dumas Malone, who has been quick to accept
evidence against a liaison and quick to reject evidence for one.—Library
Journal
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The Women
Jefferson Loved
By Virginia
Scharff
According to historian Scharff,
Thomas Jefferson’s “most closely guarded secrets,
the most fiercely maintained silences, all had to do
with the women he loved.” It stands to reason that
in order to fully understand a man as tremendously
gifted and as deeply flawed as Thomas Jefferson, one
must also understand and appreciate the women who
collectively formed the foundation of his life and
shaped the nature of his legacy. Although
Jefferson’s mother, daughters, granddaughters, wife,
and enslaved mistress were all fascinating women who
played distinct roles in his life and legend, they
were also creatures of their time and place, living,
enduring, and playing by the rules of a patriarchal,
male-dominated society. By studying these women
Scharff not only opens a window to the heart and
soul of one of our nation’s founders but also
resurrects their own contributions to our nation’s
history.—Booklist |
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The chapter on Sally Hemings does not add
much new information, but it certainly lays out the facts we
know in a comprehensive and well organized fashion. Much like
Professor Gordon-Reed, the author carefully explains the strange
dual-family existence that prevailed at Monticello, and how
servants integrated with the Jefferson family as they all lived
together. As regards the two daughters, they too emerge from the
historical darkness and we learn a great deal about them and
their important role in TJ's life and activities. As I read each
chapter, I learned all manner of things of which I had not been
aware, and I have read a lot of material on TJ. So women are
central to the story, but there is also an abundance of
additional facts and perspectives that very much enhance the
book. —Ronald H. Clark
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The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
By Annette
Gordon-Reed
This is a scholar's
book: serious, thick, complex. It's also fascinating, wise
and of the utmost importance. Gordon-Reed, a professor of
both history and law who in her previous book helped solve
some of the mysteries of the intimate relationship between
Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, now brings to
life the entire Hemings family and its tangled blood links
with slave-holding Virginia whites over an entire century.
Gordon-Reed never slips into cynicism about the author of
the Declaration of Independence. Instead, she shows how his
life was deeply affected by his slave kinspeople: his lover
(who was the half-sister of his deceased wife) and their
children. Everyone comes vividly to life, as do the places,
like Paris and Philadelphia, in which Jefferson, his
daughters and some of his black family lived. So, too, do
the complexities and varieties of slaves' lives and the
nature of the choices they had to make—when they had the
luxury of making a choice. Gordon-Reed's genius for reading
nearly silent records makes this an extraordinary work.—Publishers
Weekly |
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