Jefferson’s
Pillow: A Black Patriot Confronts the Myths of the Founding Fathers
by Roger Wilkins
Completed August 2002
Wilkins presents an interesting
mix of personal memoir with history (e.g., lots of footnotes), but this seems
to be mostly the author’s attempt to reconcile his dual identity as African and
American. How, he asks, can an African-American look at the country’s founding
and ignore that for the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and led
the country in its revolution, “all men are created equal” did not mean that
blacks and whites were equal. Wilkins explores the contradictory facts – Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, George Mason and James Madison were all patriots
who fought for freedom and equality, but all were slave owners. For Jefferson in
particular, the contradiction has to effect our view of him: despite his writings
and the fact that with his slave Sally Hemings he fathered at least one child, he
did not see slavery as an affront to man’s independence in the same way as
British taxes.
In general, I found the
book interesting, but moreso for the topic than for either the writing or the
scholarship. Wilkins’ mixing of personal memoir with historical fact does
personalize the struggle of an African American to reconcile his or her own
patriotism, but I felt it detracted from a deeper and more universal
exploration of the topic.