Jefferson–Hemings controversy

The Jefferson–Hemings controversy is a historical debate over whether there was a sexual relationship between the widowed U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and his slave and sister-in-law, Sally Hemings, and whether he fathered some or all of her six recorded children. For more than 150 years, most historians denied rumors that he had a slave concubine, Sally Hemings. Based on his grandson's report, they said that one of his nephews had been the father of Hemings's children. In the 21st century, most historians agree that Jefferson is the father of one or more of Sally's children.

In the 1850s, Jefferson's eldest grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, told historian Henry Randall that the late Peter Carr, a married nephew of Jefferson's (the son of his sister), had fathered Hemings' children; Randolph asked Randall to refrain from addressing the issue in his biography. Randall passed on this information to James Parton, another historian. Parton published the Carr story, and major historians of Jefferson generally denied Jefferson's paternity for nearly 150 years. In 1953, new documentation related to this issue was published and studied by historians. In the 1970s, biographer Fawn M. Brodie suggested Jefferson had been the father of Hemings' children. In 1997, the controversy was reopened when Annette Gordon-Reed published an analysis of the historiography on this issue, deconstructing previous versions and detailing oversights and bias. That year Ken Burns released his documentary on Jefferson as a PBS series, highlighting the debate and conflicting viewpoints. A changed consensus emerged after a Y chromosome DNA analysis was done in 1998, which showed a match between a descendant of the Jefferson family male line, a descendant of Field Jefferson, and a descendant of Eston Hemings, Sally's youngest son. It showed no match between the Carr line and the Hemings descendant.

In the majority view, the DNA evidence is consistent with Jefferson being the father of Eston Hemings, plus the historical evidence favors Jefferson's paternity for all of Hemings' children. In June 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, with introduction of the new exhibit on Sally Hemings, asserted the relationship is "settled historical matter".