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When the US turns 250 years old on Saturday, Shannon LaNier will be reckoning with a fundamental contradiction in its origin story – and his own.
LaNier is the sixth great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, the founding father who wrote the Declaration of Independence and became the third president.
He is also a direct descendant of Sally Hemings, who was enslaved by Jefferson and bore several of his children. The exploitative relationship began after she joined him in Paris at the age of just 14 and lasted for decades.
There is no starker illustration of the gap between the founding fathers’ noble aspirations and their indulgence of the nation’s original sin. Jefferson wrote “that all men are created equal” with the right to pursue “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” yet he owned more than 600 people.
“I wish he would have done more to free the enslaved people and practise what he actually preached,” LaNier, 47, says by phone from New York. “I know he tried to but he was the most powerful man in the country and he could have done more and he was living a double life so it’s unfortunate.
“Sometimes I appreciate what he’s done for this country and how much of a genius he was,” Lanier continues. “Other times I hate what he did and that he didn’t do more, and the hypocritical aspects, because we could have been so much further along as a society if he would have done what was right instead of what was profitable.”
LaNier has carved out a career as a television personality, actor, social media influencer and public speaker. He is a co-author of Jefferson’s Children: The Story of One American Family.
He was aware of his lineage since childhood but recalls that, when he was in second grade at school and the class was studying presidents, he proudly stood up and announced he was Jefferson’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. “The class laughed and the teacher said: ‘Sit down and stop telling lies!’ That was a hurtful moment in my life.”
The next day, however, LaNier’s mother went to the school to correct the teacher about his lineage. He adds: “That helped me understand the importance of knowing who I am, being strong in the belief of who I am and don’t let others define me.”
As LaNier grew up, he was aware of his famous ancestor’s name on mountain peaks, countless schools and streets and an imposing monument in the capital, Washington DC. It was equally clear that his sixth great-grandmother had been written out of history.
But LaNier came to appreciate her agency and resilience. Unlike most enslaved women, Hemings negotiated the emancipation of her children with Jefferson. While accompanying him in Paris – where she was legally free – she agreed to return to enslavement in Virginia only after Jefferson pledged to free their unborn children once they turned 21.
“We know more about Jefferson but we have to give credit to Sally Hemings. It’s because of her that we know who we are today, that she didn’t hide the story from her children, that she was able to negotiate for her kids to have freedom at the age of 21, that she was able to tell her story and make sure we were able to tell our stories.”
He adds: “I commend all those who were enslaved. A lot of people like to think of slavery as only a horrific experience but it was also an experience that proves that we come from a very powerful people, that we were able to survive the most horrible conditions on the planet, that we survived and we thrived and we still are surviving. Slavery is just a moment and life is a journey.”
The threat of historical amnesia – or deliberate historical erasure – looms large over the US’s 250th anniversary. LaNier is keenly aware of rightwing attempts to reframe the American narrative around heroic white Christian men, sidelining the diverse realities of the nation’s origins.
But as a positive alternative he points to Monticello, the sprawling Virginia estate of Jefferson where Hemings lived and worked for almost her entire life. Although for decades it in effect functioned as a shrine to a founding father, in 2018 Monticello opened six exhibits spotlighting the role that Hemings and other enslaved families played in its creation and daily life.
He reflects: “A lot of historical institutions can learn a lot from Monticello … they’re telling what happened: the good, the bad and the ugly, because you can’t have one without the other. You need a full story and context.”
Not everyone will be celebrating on 4 July, especially since Donald Trump has inserted himself into the official commemorations. For many African Americans, the date has long been a subject of fraught debate. The question posed by Frederick Douglass in 1852 – “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” – continues to echo into the 21st century.
LaNier observes: “Some people in the Black community don’t want to celebrate July 4 because they say we have Juneteenth and we weren’t really free then. But it’s just as important to celebrate July 4 because, if we did not, it would make all the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors in vain.
“It’s important that people know how involved people of colour were in the founding of this country, that we would not have a 250-year anniversary without people of colour slaving and labouring constantly.”
He adds: “Who do they think built the White House? Who do they think was helping Jefferson with everything when he was writing the Declaration of Independence? He had people running and controlling his plantation. All these things are part of the foundation of this country and it continues to try to get whitewashed or forgotten.”
Saturday also marks the bicentenary of the death of Jefferson, at age 83, in Monticello just after noon on 4 July 1826. Several hours later the second president, John Adams, died in Quincy, Massachusetts, at the age of 90. It was the 50th anniversary of independence.
For LaNier, the beauty of the Declaration of Independence lies not in the narrow, hypocritical story of the man who wrote it but in the expansive capacity of those words to be claimed by all generations. Even though the US currently seems in a mood less of aspiration than anxiety, LaNier strives to remain optimistic about the future.
“Sometimes you take two steps forward, you got to take two steps back,” he reflects. “Hopefully when this era is over, we can take several leaps forward and get caught back up.
“It’s going to take some while to recover from what has been done but it’s not impossible and, if we keep concerning ourselves with the words that Jefferson wrote, ‘all men are created equal’ – not just rich, land-owning white men – then we can get to a better place where this country can go through some healing and reconciliation.
“But we have to know our past, we have to know the mistakes that were made so we can move forward and not repeat those mistakes.”
