That early, firsthand experience with the interplay of race and history informs much of Gordon-Reed's work, including her compulsively readable new book, "The Hemingses of Monticello," in which she traces the family history of Sally Hemings, the slave who had a 38-year relationship with Thomas Jefferson. But we had this notion that blacks, whether you wanted to be or not, were going to be judged. "I had a sense of being on display," says Gordon-Reed, remembering also how her grandmother went to a fancy Houston department store and bought her granddaughter a new wardrobe, so she would make a good impression on the white students and their families. Board of Education had passed a decade earlier, the school district of Conroe, Texas, where Gordon-Reed lived in 1963, operated under a system called "freedom of choice." Gordon-Reed's mother, a teacher at the "black" school, and her father, a local businessman, knew that "freedom of choice" really meant de facto segregation, so to challenge it they insisted that their daughter attend the "white" school. When she was in first grade, Annette Gordon-Reed made history.
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