Who would Jefferson pick?

By Brian McNeill

Published: June 6, 2008

Who would Thomas Jefferson vote for in the 2008 presidential race?

Barack Obama.

At least, that is the view of an outspoken descendant of the nation’s third president.

“If Jefferson was here today, he would probably be one of the ones voting for Barack,” said Shannon Lanier, a black man whose lineage traces back to Jefferson’s relationship with slave Sally Hemings.

Both Jefferson and Obama, Lanier pointed out, share democratic values and an ambition for change.

“In the words of Barack Obama, ‘We are the change we’ve been waiting for,’” said Lanier, co-author of “Jefferson’s Children: One American Family.”

Lanier and his white cousin, Martha Randolph Carr, spoke Friday afternoon at the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ two-day conference on the last 10 years of Virginia politics.

The Jefferson cousins discussed race, politics and DNA testing in an air-conditioned tent behind the Center for Politics’ new headquarters at Montesano off Old Ivy Road.

Lanier and Carr described what it was like growing up with the knowledge that they were descended from a founding father. Carr rejected the expectations and labels attached to her heritage. Lanier was proud of his Jefferson connection, but was often met with disbelief.

Ten years ago, retired UVa professor Eugene Foster collected DNA samples from male descendants of Jefferson and Hemings. The results of his testing indicated that Jefferson may have fathered a child with Hemings.

While some of Jefferson’s descendants reject the notion that black people may also be descendants, most of them have embraced their newly larger family, Lanier and Carr said.

As a Jefferson descendent, Carr has seen firsthand her family’s struggle with race and history. Now, she said, in a political season with history’s first black presidential nominee, America has a chance to move beyond skin color. Obama’s candidacy, she said, is showing the nation that the world is changing and the old notions no longer apply.

“What it will say to every child out there is that the dream you hold in your heart is a possibility,” she said.

Ken Stroupe, the Center for Politics’ chief of staff, said that the story of Jefferson’s descendants shows that divisions of the “dysfunctional American political family could also be healed.”

Stroupe said that American families are having frank discussions about race because of Obama’s candidacy against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain.

“Many Americans are having a moment of reckoning now,” he said.

Carr said that she is excited that the frontrunners of the Democratic primary were a black man and a woman.

“The idea of this political race is the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” she said. “Because it will get you talking.”

Jefferson would have approved, Lanier said. “As Jefferson said, we’re all created equal,” he said. “It’s just taken a little longer to realize that.”