![]() ![]() That early, firsthand experience with the interplay of race and history informs much of Gordon-Reed's work, including her compulsively readable new book, "The Hemingses of Monticello," in which she traces the family history of Sally Hemings, the slave who had a 38-year relationship with Thomas Jefferson. But we had this notion that blacks, whether you wanted to be or not, were going to be judged. "I had a sense of being on display," says Gordon-Reed, remembering also how her grandmother went to a fancy Houston department store and bought her granddaughter a new wardrobe, so she would make a good impression on the white students and their families. Board of Education had passed a decade earlier, the school district of Conroe, Texas, where Gordon-Reed lived in 1963, operated under a system called "freedom of choice." Gordon-Reed's mother, a teacher at the "black" school, and her father, a local businessman, knew that "freedom of choice" really meant de facto segregation, so to challenge it they insisted that their daughter attend the "white" school. ![]() ![]() When she was in first grade, Annette Gordon-Reed made history. ![]()
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