A founder held 'hostage' : the image of Thomas Jefferson in the civil rights movement, 1954-1968

This thesis examines the use of Thomas Jefferson's image throughout the South's struggle over civil rights. Looking at the fourteen years that followed the Supreme Court's Brown decision, I have investigated how Southern white supporters of segregation and black civil rights activists manipulated and invoked the image of Jefferson to support their specific agendas. It is my argument that the roots of the late 1960s change in how historians interpreted Jefferson are based in the popular debate over his image that raged because of the civil rights movement.

The segregationists' campaign to "capture" the heroic image of Jefferson - memorialized in a Washington D.C. temple in 1943 - was successful in linking Jefferson to a racist, unpopular movement. Black civil rights leaders, conversely, did not attempt to rescue the memorialized Jefferson. As the civil rights movement moved further left in the late 1960s, black leaders in fact also began to criticize the heroic image in ways that echoed their white extremist enemies. Out of this active debate came the first historical monographs that emphasized Jefferson's racism and the popular narrative of his relationship with Sally Hemings.

My evidence is based in historian's works, used here as primary sources, and in popular media, such as newspapers, national magazines, and speeches by famous black activists and segregationist leaders.