Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Jefferson on Race: A Reader

Jefferson on Race: A Reader

Jefferson, Thomas
Gordon-Reed, Annette

Hardcover

Black American History19th Century United States HistoryBlack American Studies

Publisher Price: $24.95

ISBN10: 0691122067
ISBN13: 9780691122069
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Mar 31 2026
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.55
Height: 1.60 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

From The New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson's writings on race that every American should read

Among America's Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal enslaved more than 600 people of African descent even as he acknowledged the injustice of slavery, saw himself as its opponent, and condemned it in his writings. How is this possible? In Jefferson on Race, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed gathers Jefferson's most revealing writings about African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, enabling readers as never before to directly explore his complex and contradictory thoughts, feelings, and decisions on these subjects--the most hotly debated aspect of his legacy.

These selections come from Jefferson's public and private writings, letters, and plantation records, as well as accounts by contemporaries, including his son Madison Hemings and three other people formerly enslaved at Monticello. The book documents Jefferson's ideas about--and self-image in relation to--African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, as well as his conduct, including interactions with individual Black and Native people. The writings show how Jefferson responded to living in a multiracial slave society while professing progressive ideals, and how his views on race and slavery were shaped by his experiences with enslaved Black people.

Jefferson on Race is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Jefferson's conflicted attitudes--and the impact of race and slavery on American history.

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