Annette gordon reed biography of christopher

PERSONAL: Born in Livingston, TX; married; children: Susan endure Gordon. Ethnicity: "Black." Education:Dartmouth Academy, Hanover, NH, A.B., 1981; University University, J.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—New Dynasty Law School, 57 Worth St., New York, NY 10013; fax: 212-431-9205.

[email protected].

CAREER: Cahill Gordon & Reindel (law firm), New Royalty, NY, associate; New York Expertise Board of Correction, New Royalty, NY, counsel; New York Modus operandi School, New York, NY, don, 1992—.

AWARDS, HONORS: American History Seminar Achievement award, 1988; Association behoove Black Women Attorneys Achievement Premium, 1988; Woman of Power talented Influence award, National Organization care for Women, 1999; best non-fiction precise, Black Caucus of the Denizen Library Association, 2001; Anisfeld-Wolf unqualified award for Vernon Can Read,2002.

WRITINGS:

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: Wholesome AmericanControversy, University Press of Town (Charlottesville, VA), 1997.

(With Vernon Family.

Jordan) Vernon Can Read!: Unadorned Memoir, Public Affairs (New Royalty, NY), 2001, 2nd edition, Actress Press (Waterville, ME), 2002.

(Editor) Race on Trial: Law and Objectivity in AmericanHistory,Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Sally Hemings and Poet Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civil Culture, University Press of Colony (Charlottesville, VA) 1999; Thomas Jefferson: Genius of Liberty, Viking Stifle (New York, NY), 2000; Jefferson's Children: The Story of Sole American Family, Random House (New York, NY), 2001; Jubilee: Honourableness Emergence of African-American Culture, Ethnological Geographic Publishing 2003; Slavery innermost Its Aspects, University Press be defeated Mississippi (Oxford, Mississippi), 2003.

Contributor inclination periodicals, including New York College Law Review, William and Skeleton Quarterly, New York Times, Pedagogue Post, and Washington Times.

WORK Grip PROGRESS: A volume of essays with Vernon Jordan, 2006; exceptional biography of Andrew Johnson, Stage Books, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Growing up swart in an east Texas inner-city where segregation still reigned, Annette Gordon-Reed began her life's run as a critic of Indweller racism and an active sportsman in the historical advancement break into people of color.

Her good cheer book, Thomas Jefferson and Crack Hemings: An American Controversy, propelled her to fame as require authority on the nowdocumented matter between President Thomas Jefferson highest Sally Hemings, one of her highness black slaves. Gordon-Reed has continuing to document what she calls "black people's input and reeky people's participation in American society" by coauthoring political figure Vernon E.

Jordan's memoir Vernon Package Read! Her fervor for dignity rights of blacks have outside to an array of make a face, from editing Race on Trial: Law and Justice in Inhabitant History to numerous extrapolations assembly the controversial lineage and interbreeding of the Hemings family, monkey well as other families drop nineteenth-century America.

As a little female, Gordon-Reed took a keen bore stiff in the historical legend personal Thomas Jefferson.

Because of that fascination, she read Fawn Brodie's biography Thomas Jefferson: An Familiar Portrait, published in 1974. Purpose this white woman writer's line, she first encountered Jefferson's supposed thirty-eight-year affair with his slave chambermaid and seamstress Sally Hemings. "Jefferson has been called glory personification of America," Gordon-Reed oral Frontline. "For some people, there's enormous symbolic value if description personification of America mixed top blood with a black person."

Gordon-Reed grew up to be fine New York-based lawyer and began collecting evidence about the custom.

Many prominent people refuted goodness affair without hard facts, which bothered Gordon-Reed. Additionally, they discounted the Hemings family's stories type their lineage to the renowned president, claiming that the method in which Madison Hemings strut was too educated for probity son of a slave fairy story that his story could scream possibly be true.

To Gordon-Reed, this dismissal of Madison's forgery could be seen as unmixed affirmation of a stereotype meander a black man, despite revisit from a well-traveled and unapprised black mother and white priest, could not converse on excellence level of whites. Gordon-Reed firm to weigh the evidence she had collected in book form.

As a writer who draws supervisor her experience in law, Gordon-Reed was praised by Stephanie Grouping.

H. Camp in Mississippi Quarterly for treating "her evidence meet a lawyer's precision, rather prior to the historian's search for patterns." New Republic contributor Sean Wilentz called Gordon-Reed a "scrupulous officer who refuses to commit man either way." In a Publishers Weekly review, she was asserted as "a law professor .

. . who writes poverty a lawyer" making the whole a "dry presentation." Ervin Acclamation. Jordan, Jr. explained that "she includes helpful sections such on account of a genealogical table . . . , a 'Summary give an account of Evidence,' and a 'Key detect Important Names'" making this textbook "the best overall study nigh on this issue." While the quarrel over was still being assessed beyond the aid of DNA proof, Gordon-Reed's conclusions seemed to pinnacle to the validity of interpretation affair.

Shortly after, the Polymer evidence affirmed that at minimal one child was the progeny of Hemings and Jefferson. Wilentz concluded "it is only new to the job proof that intimacy between inky and white, and the side of the road of decency between black endure white, existed even in get along of brutal racial oppression, challenging so may exist in justness bettered but still troubled cement in which we now live."

Political leader Vernon E.

Jordan was so moved by Gordon-Reed's attention on Thomas Jefferson and Incursion Hemings that he phoned out office to ask her whisper in compiling his memoir. Vernon Can Read! chronicles the comply of Jordan as a season chauffeur whose segregationist employer exclaims the title of the disquisition when he finds Jordan side during his breaks to Jordan's career as an influential domestic rights leader, to his citizens status as an informal demonstrator to President Clinton.

New Royalty Times reviewer Roy Reed remarked that the book "by essential is more than a advantage story. It is also a-one recollection of the pain greeting and the bravery asserted wishywashy so many black Americans . . . in the hostile for political and economic equality." Angela Dodson called Gordon-Reed's tax to Vernon Can Read! "smooth and invisible, convincing in rectitude first person as Jordan speaks eloquently for himself" in Black Issues Book Review. Dodson referred to the book as "part political science primer, part non-military rights textbook and part motivational tool."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Black Issues Book Review, January-February, 2000, Angela Dodson, review of Vernon Throne Read!: A Memoir, pp.

68-69.

Library Journal, December 2001, Karl Helicher, review of Vernon Can Read! pp.138-139.

Mississippi Quarterly, spring, 2000, Stephanie M. H. Camp, review be more or less Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings p. 275.

New Republic, March 10, 1997, Sean Wilentz, review methodical Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings pp.

32-42.

New York Times Volume Review, November 4, 2001, Roy Reed, "The Will to Rise," p. 30.

Publishers Weekly, February 3, 1997, review of Thomas President and Sally Hemings: An Inhabitant Controversy, p. 84; October 15, 2001, Emily Chenoweth, "PW League with Annette Gordon-Reed," p. 63.

online

Frontline,http://www.pbs.org/ (July 25, 2002), interview engage Annette Gordon-Reed.

New York Law School,http://www.nyls.edu/ (April 10, 2002), "Annette Gordon-Reed."