Harriet and Beverly Hemings Allowed to Escape Monticello, Living as Free People

Harriet and Beverly Hemings, children of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, were quietly allowed to leave Monticello in 1822 and passed into white society as free people. Their successful navigation of a racial boundary — Beverly reportedly settling in Washington, Harriet in an unidentified northern city — represents individual acts of survival and self-determination.