Jefferson-Memorial (Wikimedia Commons)
Jefferson on Race
Historians have long known of Thomas Jefferson’s troubled racial views and actions.
When the Jeffererson Memorial was commissioned in 1934 and completed in 1943, Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for America had not yet challenged and reinterpreted Jefferson’s belief that African Americans could not live in the same government as whites.
Jefferson’s racial views are not widely know by the public. Part of the reason for this is that when Jefferson’s work is quoted, it is quoted selectively.
You can see below the way that the Jefferson Memorial selectively quotes from Jefferson’s writings, leaving off the part about deporting all African-Americans after they are freed.
Jefferson Quote: Cherry-picked
If you look at the phrase about two-thirds down the text, you can see a quote from Jefferson’s 1821 autobiography:
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.
Yet this is a cherry-picked quote, because if you continue reading the original quote, you can see that Jefferson believed that free African Americans could never live under the same government as whites and he intended to eventually deport all African-American (to Africa).
Click on the blue arrows above and below the quote to get the surrounding 500-characters of context and click on the “source” link to view the document this quote context was extracted from.
Note:
This entire text on Panel 3 of the Jefferson Memorial is a collection quotes, are what I call “naked quotations”- because they have been stripped of their context.
Notice that their extended quotation on Monticello.org does not include the reference to deportation.