Book Conversation: History by a Hair

Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery

Featuring Richard Kurin

September 30 @ 6:30 pm – 8pm| Doors open at 6 pm

Join Smithsonian scholar Richard Kurin for the launch of his new book, “History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery.” In 2011, staff at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History discovered a light red  hair inside the pages of Thomas Jefferson’s Bible. That hair sparked an unprecedented scientific investigation that could finally resolve the most enduring question surrounding his life: Did he father the children of Sally Hemings, an African American enslaved woman?

For over two centuries, the Jefferson–Hemings controversy has shaped American debates about race, power, slavery, and the mythology of the Founding Fathers. In this riveting narrative—part scientific detective story, part historical epic—Richard Kurin leads readers through the fifteen-year-long genomic investigation conducted with leading DNA scientists, archaeologists, genealogists, forensic experts, and Jefferson and Hemings’ descendants across the country. The result is the first conclusive, scientifically validated answer to a question that has reverberated since the eighteenth century—an answer that settles the historical record, deepens our understanding of Jefferson, honors generations of family oral history, and asks America to confront the full complexity of its origins.

Richard Kurin is the Smithsonian Institution’s Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large and previously served as Under Secretary overseeing all museums and scientific centers. An author of several popular books on American history and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Kurin has led major national cultural initiatives and produced award-winning public history.

A book signing will occur after the book talk.  This program is in conjunction with The Lines We Cross: 250 Years of Maryland Forging America.