History by a Hair: Richard Kurin on Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings

A tiny strand of reddish hair discovered inside Thomas Jefferson’s personal Bible at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History set in motion a remarkable scientific investigation. Could advances in DNA analysis finally answer one of the most debated questions in American history: whether Jefferson fathered the children of Sally Hemings, the woman he enslaved?

In “History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old-Mystery,” Smithsonian scholar Richard Kurin tells the story behind this groundbreaking research and what it reveals about Jefferson, the Hemings family and the power of science to illuminate the past. Kurin will discuss the book with Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed, whose landmark book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” transformed our understanding of the Jefferson-Hemings story.

Copies of the book will be available to purchase from our bookstore partner Brookline Booksmith and Kurin will sign after the conversation.