By Wendy Greenberg

On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Princeton Public Library (PPL) is offering a discussion on the complexities and contradictions found within the character of the document’s acknowledged primary author, Thomas Jefferson.

Discussing Jefferson’s statement that “all men are created equal,” while he enslaved hundreds, will be Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, who wrote several books about Jefferson, including the recently released Jefferson on Race: A Reader. She will be joined by Princeton’s Eddie Glaude Jr., professor of African American history at Princeton University and widely known political commentator.

Gordon-Reed and Glaude will discuss “The Jefferson Paradox: Race, Slavery and the Promise of America” on Sunday, April 26, from 3 to 4:15 p.m., at the Nassau Presbyterian Church, 61 Nassau Street. Registration is required to attend the free event at princetonlibrary.libnet.info/event/16061539.

The library, Princeton University Press, Nassau Presbyterian Church, and Labyrinth Books are presenting the program with the Princeton University Humanities Council, Princeton Theological Seminary, Historical Society of Princeton, Morven Museum & Garden, Paul Robeson House of Princeton, Department of African American Studies and GradFutures Professional Development Program, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The special event is the spring highlight of the library’s yearlong programming commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“Even if this year were not the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the issuing of the Declaration of Independence, the library would be pleased to host such a significant conversation as this one between Professor Gordon-Reed and Professor Glaude,” said Clifford Robinson, the library’s public humanities specialist, who coordinated the event with Adult Programming Manager Janie Hermann. “But at the time of the U.S. Semiquincentennial, we hope that this event offers an opportunity to become more thoughtful about the meaning of the Declaration, its celebrated author, and the society within which it was written. This program will surely be a highlight of the author series organized by the library’s Public Humanities Initiative, to explore the theme of revolution and the legacy of the American revolution in our time.”

Jefferson on Race is a collection of Jefferson’s most revealing writings about African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, edited by historian Gordon-Reed. In her book, she examines Jefferson’s ideas of equality and his contradictory life as a slaveholder, and invites readers to “confront one of the most enduring contradictions in American history,” according to the publisher, Princeton University Press.

She writes in the preface: “No prominent member of the founding generation engaged more directly and some would argue more disastrously with the subject of race than Thomas Jefferson.” As he believed himself to be antislavery, she writes, and proclaimed that “all men are created equal,’ while enslaving “hundreds of people of African descent over the course of his life,” the preface continues, “How could this be? How could these contrasting sentiments exist so strongly in one person?”

Drawing from Jefferson’s letters, public writings, plantation records, and accounts from those who lived at Monticello, including his son Madison Hemings, the result, says the publisher, “is a revealing portrait of a founding figure grappling with the realities of a multiracial slave society while professing ideals of liberty and equality.”

Gordon-Reed won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for History for her 2008 book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, and was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for History. The book also won the National Book Award, among other awards. The New York Times-bestselling legal scholar and historian is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Her books also include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, and (with Peter S. Onuf) Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.

Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in African American Studies at Princeton University. His books include Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul; In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America; and The New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own, taking a look at Black communities and the challenges of democracy. His latest book, We Are The Leaders We Have Been Looking For (The W.E.B. DuBois Lectures), is a call to action. Glaude serves on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees, and frequently appears as an MS Now contributor on programs including Morning Joe and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace.

The book Jefferson on Race, said Robinson, “gives a richer perspective on Jefferson and his thoughts, attitudes, and behavior with respect to Black and Native people than most of us will have ever had an opportunity to consider. While Jefferson is undoubtedly one of the great minds in American history, his legacy as a champion of human freedom and equality is complicated by the reality of how he lived and benefited from slavery.”

“All of us can benefit from revisiting this history together with Professor Gordon-Reed’s illuminating commentary, which brilliantly connects the issues raised through her research and editing to contemporary struggles, while respecting the integrity of the historic record in all its complexity.”