Thomas Jefferson Foundation

Critics at the conservative Heritage Foundation and elsewhere claim that the Foundation has de-emphasized Jefferson’s contributions to religious freedom, the Declaration of Independence, and the early U.S. presidency in favor of a left-wing narrative that ignores all but one aspect of Jefferson’s complex life, namely his personal ownership of enslaved persons. ²

History

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation was founded in 1923 to “purchase, preserve, and maintain Monticello as a memorial to Thomas Jefferson and his ideals.” ³ Jefferson’s legacy included signing a ban on the importation of enslaved persons to the U.S. during his presidency. ^{4 5} While Jefferson himself owned enslaved persons, he was critical of the institution of slavery, writing: “The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust…the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation…” Jefferson also expressed his hope that such an emancipation would happen peacefully, “with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.” ^{6 7}

Following Jefferson’s death in 1826, his daughter sold Monticello to Uriah Levy, a naval officer. Levy’s nephew later sold the estate to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1923 for the price of $500,000. ³ The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation began restoration work shortly thereafter, and drew over 20,000 visitors to Monticello in 1924. In 1935, a bill was proposed to turn over Monticello to the federal government but was rejected in favor of “continued private ownership by ‘public-spirited citizens.’” By 1997, Monticello was receiving nearly 600,000 visitors annually. At the turn of the century, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation dropped the word “memorial” from its name. ³

Monticello claims to be the only place in America honored as both a United Nations World Heritage location and a U.S. National Historic Landmark. ⁸ Its importance as a landmark was underscored when President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande visited it in 2014 as part of Hollande’s state visit to the U.S. ⁹

Since 2000, the Foundation, and Monticello as a byproduct, has endorsed left-of-center views on a variety of matters, including institutional diversity, Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemings, and the importance of Jefferson’s holding of slaves. In 2022, the organization hired for a diversity and equity vice president, and named a board chair who previously held senior roles with the Obama administration and leading left-of-center think tank Center for American Progress (CAP). ^{10 11} It also held an event honoring Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved persons at the end of the Civil War. ¹²

Mountaintop Project

In 2013, billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, who described the Declaration of Independence as “a propaganda document,” awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation $10 million for the new “Mountaintop Project” which promised to “reveal a more complete story of Jefferson and his world” to tourists. ^{13 14} The Mountaintop Project included the renovation of Mulberry Row, where Jefferson’s slaves lived, as well as the restoration of the plantation house’s upper floors. ¹⁴ Rubenstein donated another $10 million to the project in 2015. ¹⁵

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation opened the newly renovated Monticello in 2018. It claimed to accurately represent “Monticello as Jefferson knew it,” but drew controversy. ¹⁶ According to the New York Post, Monticello’s new tours portrayed Jefferson’s long-debated affair with his slave Sally Hemings as a definite case and heavily implied that sexual coercion was involved. Signs at the estate added “the word ‘enslaved’ before every possible job description, often multiple times,” and Monticello tour guides were permitted to make many claims critical of Jefferson, including that Jefferson did not make his own inventions. The Post claimed that visitors were often “startled” by a disturbing faceless portrait of an enslaved man displayed immediately inside the house. Visitors have reportedly been encouraged to contemplate the “violence” of settlers seizing the land from Native Americans. ¹⁷

Criticism

Monticello’s decision to prioritize Jefferson’s holding of slaves has led to broad criticism that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation is using the historical estate as a left-wing propaganda tool. According to a Daily Signal interview with Brenda Hafera of the Heritage Foundation, Monticello contains “some exhibits on the construction of Monticello and Jefferson as an architect and scientist…[but] no exhibit, for example, on the Declaration of Independence, on the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.” ¹⁸ Hafera said that Monticello and other historical sites have been taken over by proponents of critical race theory, who hope to portray America’s foundations as ultimately racist: “It’s not simply about discussing race and slavery. It’s something far more insidious.” ¹⁸

Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner argued that the unproven Sally Hemings case was used by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation as a “hobbyhorse” to denigrate Jefferson’s legacy. ⁵ Hillyer reminded readers that Jefferson, one of the primary drafters of the Declaration of Independence, had proposed including a criticism of slavery, and later helped create the “part of the Northwest Ordinance that forbade slavery’s spread into new U.S. territories.” ⁵

National Review’s John Fund used the New York Post article as the launching point for a column which accused critics of America’s Founding Fathers of taking over the homes of Jefferson and his fellow Founder James Madison. ¹⁹

The Thomas Jefferson Historical Society, which the New York Times reported was founded to oppose propagation of the view that Jefferson had six children with his slave Sally Hemings and that the relationship was likely not consensual, has heavily criticized Monticello’s framing of the relationship as uncertain but leaning towards rape. ²⁰

White McKenzie Wallenborn, a former historical interpreter for Monticello, was on a research committee that formally concluded that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ children. Wallenborn publicly disagreed with the report, which was issued in 2000. ²¹

In 2018, author Andrew Holowchak defended Jefferson against Monticello’s accusations about fathering Hemings’ children. Holowchak, who has authored or edited 10 books and 70 essays about Jefferson, disputed Monticello’s position, and cited other authors he said have refuted the 2000 Monticello report about Jefferson’s and Hemings’ relationship. ²²

Leadership

Melody Barnes is an attorney and former high-ranking Democratic Party official who became chair of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s board of directors in 2021. Barnes directed the White House Domestic Policy Council under the Obama administration, and was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP). She was also chief counsel to the late former U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA). ¹¹

Leslie Greene Bowman works as president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. ²³ She previously served in a variety of positions, including as the assistant director of exhibitions, for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and later as the director and CEO of Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Delaware. ²⁴ Bowman has been a member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House under U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. ²³

David Rubenstein is the co-founder of the hedge fund the Carlyle Group, a major figure in international politics, and a large donor to U.S. historical sites and organizations. He chairs the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Economic Club of Washington, among other organizations. ²⁵ Rubenstein derisively described the Declaration of Independence as “a propaganda document” that was “an advertisement” for the American Revolution. He argued that Thomas Jefferson himself did not live up to his ideal “’that all men are created equal’” but rather that the phrase only took on “a life of its own” later in American history. ¹³ In 2019, Rubenstein donated $10 million to refurbish and upkeep the Smithsonian-run Thomas Jefferson Memorial. ²⁶ He has donated tens of millions of dollars to other Smithsonian-run projects. ²⁷

Funding

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s revenues were nearly $70 million in 2019, with expenses totaling close to $32 million and assets of $344 million. Over $9.3 million of its revenue came from Monticello admissions, $5.5 million from grants, and $5 million from inventory sales. ²⁸ These figures were a sharp departure from the previous year, during the Mountaintop Project’s opening, when the Thomas Jefferson Foundation made only $23 million in revenues and had expenses in the red at $33 million. ²⁹

The Foundation receives funding from a variety of outside organizations, including the U.S. government. Mountaintop Project and related exhibit donors included private groups like the Ford Foundation and the Sarah and Ross Perot, Jr. Foundation and taxpayer money from the National Endowment for the Humanities. ³⁰ The Mellon Foundation donated $450,000 in 2013. ³¹

The National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency funded by taxpayers, has provided millions of dollars in grants for various Monticello projects since 1977. ³² The agency also gave the Foundation $215,000 in CARES Act money to keep 21 people on staff and to purchase equipment for online programs during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. ³³