Teacher's Guide for FOOTSTEPS Sally Hemings

1. If a memorial for Sally Hemings was placed at Monticello, what might it be?
   • her statue
   • a fountain
   • an eternal flame
   • a garden
   • a plaque
   • a scholarship for girls
   • a painting
   • a piece of sculpture
   • a poem
   • a library of books about slavery
   • a quilt
   • a nature trail, or hiking trail
   
   Describe your ideas for a memorial for her. Draw the kind of memorial you'd like to see. If you pick a garden, describe the flowers and the best location. What impression would you like the memorial to give?
   
   Perhaps your class might like to have a contest to plan the most beautiful and meaningful memorial and vote on the winner.
   
   Do you think the musical described on the last page of the magazine is an appropriate memorial to her?
   
   
2. How would you answer critics who say Sally Hemings probably just made the best of a bad situation and does not deserve a memorial the way activist heroes Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman do? What do you think?
   
   
3. Do you think Sally Hemings could have or should have run away from Monticello?
   
   
4. How do you feel about visiting Monticello? How would you answer critics who say that plantations that had slaves should not be national monuments and that to keep up such places is undemocratic? Visit the Monticello web pages and see if there is any information about Sally Hemings. Click in travel agents, contact them to see if there is any place to visit in Charlottesville related to Sally Hemings. Find out if there is a job at Monticello that you would like to have.
   
   
5. If you could interview him on the Larry King Show, what five questions would you ask Thomas Jefferson?
   
   
6. If you were Barbara Walters or Oprah Winfrey, what five questions would you ask Sally Hemings?
   
   
7. What would be a good title for an autobiography by Sally Hemings? Make a list of some of the chapter titles you'd like to read in such a book. Try writing such a book.
   
   
8. If you had to pick one, either Thomas Jefferson or Sally Hemings, to be, which one would you be and why? Poll your classmates.
   
   
9. Make a list of five things we do not know about Sally Hemings.
   
   
10. Make a list of five things we do not kow about Thomas Jefferson.
    
    
11. Thomas Jefferson wrote his own epitaph for his tombstone at Monticello. No one knows where Sally Hemings is buried. Here is Thomas Jefferson's epitaph:
    
    Here was buried
    THOMAS JEFFERSON
    Author of the Declaration of American Independence
    of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
    and Father of the University of Virginia
    
    What epitaph would you write for the grave of Sally Hemings?
    
    
12. Pretend you are a congressperson in l938 and debating putting Thomas Jefferson's profile on one side of the nickel and a relief of Monticello on the other side. What contradictions in Jefferson's life might make it hard for you to decide which way to vote? How would you vote? Ask your class to vote. Which black persons do you think should be on an American coin or pictured on paper money? Draw or make a model of your idea.
    
    
13. Why do you suppose Thomas Jefferson did not make plans to free his slaves after his death as George Washington did? Why do you suppose Martha, his daughter, freed Sally after her father's death? What kind of a relationship do you suppose Martha, Jefferson's only surviving child, and Sally Hemings had? Could friendship with an owner be part of a slave's life? Could Martha, a woman in the days when women had few rights, be sympathetic to Sally's position as a slave?
    
    
14. If you had been Harriet, Sally's child, freed and "nearly as white as anybody" would you have tried to pass as white? Why or why not?
    
    
15. If the founders of our country had abolished slavery, how might the history of American been changed?
    
    
16. Read: Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack
    
    Imagine how the book would be different if slavery had been abolished when the Declaration of Independence had been written.

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Updated: 9/2/10 11:43 am
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