Thomas Jefferson wrote about liberty and freedom and yet owned over six hundred slaves during his lifetime. He’s a founder who many of us have a hard time understanding. This why we need an expert to lead us through his life, so we can better understand who Jefferson was and how he came to his seemingly paradoxical ideas about slavery and freedom. Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and legal history at Harvard University and the winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for her work on Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings Family, leads us on an exploration through the life and ideas of Thomas Jefferson.
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