Gordon-Reed, Annette

Impact on the world

A Harvard-trained lawyer rather than a traditionally credentialed historian, Gordon-Reed first challenged the historical establishment in her 1997 book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, applying legal reasoning to expose how generations of Jefferson scholars had uncritically assumed that white enslavers told the truth while enslaved people's testimony, including that of Hemings's son Madison, could be dismissed — an argument later substantiated by 1998 DNA testing confirming Jefferson's paternity of Hemings's children. Her 2008 follow-up, The Hemingses of Monticello, traced four generations of the family from their African and Virginia origins through Jefferson's 1826 death, deliberately centering the enslaved Hemingses as full individuals rather than supporting characters in Jefferson's story; the book won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and fourteen additional awards, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, Time, and the Los Angeles Times. Gordon-Reed, who as a child in 1965 was the first student to integrate her segregated hometown school system in Conroe, Texas, went on to receive a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2010, and now holds a University Professorship at Harvard, teaching in both its Law School and history department.

Life & background

Born November 19, 1958, in Livingston, Texas, and raised in segregated Conroe, Texas, Gordon-Reed studied history at Dartmouth College before earning her law degree at Harvard Law School in 1984. She practiced corporate law and worked as counsel for the New York City Board of Corrections before joining New York Law School's faculty in 1993, and currently serves as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, teaching history and law.

Sources

1. The Pulitzer Prizes; National Endowment for the Humanities; Harvard Law School