Harvard Law and History Professor Annette Gordon-Reed made history on April 20, 2009 by becoming the first Black person to win the coveted Pulitzer Prize for History. Gordon-Reed’s research on the relationship between President Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings changed the historical context of the pair’s long-rumored union.
A native of Livingston, Texas, Gordon-Reed graduated from Dartmouth College in 1981, and Harvard Law School in 1984. In the early portion of her career, she served as counsel for the New York City Board of Corrections. Gordon-Reed was also the Wallace Stevens Professor of Law at New York Law School from 1992 to 2010.
Gordon-Reed had a deep interest in Jefferson since her childhood. That interest morphed into Gordon-Reed further examining the Hemings connection. Gordon-Reed’s 1997 book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy was her first official foray into what would be become her life’s work. A reprinting of the book included a foreword that highlighted a DNA study that supported suggestions that Jefferson fathered several children with Hemings.
Gordon-Reed’s second book on Jefferson, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family helped to humanize the descendants of Jefferson and Hemings. Gordon-Reed won the Pulitzer for it, along with several other awards including the George Washington Book Prize and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Gordon-Reed with the National Humanities Medal, the nation’s highest such honor.
In 2011, Gordon-Reed released the book Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series—The 17th President, 1865-1869.
Today, Gordon-Reed is the Professor of Law and History at Harvard, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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