Contemplative Site

Despite the horrors of slavery, African Americans at Monticello forged enduring family and community connections and cultural and spiritual practices. Thomas Jefferson held at least 607 people in bondage, though historians do not know the exact number of people who lived in slavery at Monticello, and he may have owned more people than those whose known names are listed. Because Jefferson rarely recorded last names, many of the enslaved are known only by their first names, and the names are organized by birth date to emphasize personhood and community connections. The site stands in an area Jefferson designed as a wooded ornamental landscape called the Grove, where enslaved people moved along the 1-in-10 road to reach the North Spring, an important water source. Although Jefferson and the founders declared that all men are created equal, that vision excluded people of color. Through slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, Monticello's enslaved families and their descendants looked to the future, sustained by religious faith, belief in education, drive to succeed, and strong family bonds, and they worked to expand the meaning of the Declaration of Independence through freedom struggles from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement and into the present day.

Virginia · United States