I'm descended from several slave-owners. Thomas Jefferson is just the most famous one. None of this is anything my family ever talked about.

And I hardly know anyone whose family has talked about this. I organized an event for 20 white descendants of slave-owners - descendants of big plantation owners to small scale farmers -  and hardly any of them had heard any mention in their family about the fact that their ancestors were slave-owners.

There were several things that led to me being interested in this. First, in RC [Re-evaluation Counseling] I got encouragement and a safe place to take a look at racism on a personal level - what my childhood memories were of people of color and of racism, and how racism has affected my life. I also got encouragement to take pride in my own background, my own family history, and to listen to other people's stories, people from all kinds of backgrounds. I learned to stop and really listen to other people's stories, and learned how powerful it was to have someone else really listening to me. I started feeling more and more connected to all kinds of people.

When I started learning about my family history, on both my mom's and dad's sides, there were lots of things to be proud of, and there were also some hard things. Being encouraged to be genuinely proud of my ancestors made it possible to face the harder things, like them being slave-owners. I used to be totally uninterested in history, now I find it so interesting.

I have loved meeting the Hemings family members I've met. They are great people! I first met them online, on a discussion list David Works set up after the Monticello Association voted not to recognize the Hemings as descendants of Jefferson. Then I met some Hemingses at the next Monticello Association meeting (my first one), and then more at the first Hemings family reunion. That was a great experience, very joyful, and an honor to be invited. It was really great to be here this weekend with my Jefferson cousins from both sides. We had some really good talks, we figured some things out, got more connected, and got to laugh a lot.