Monticello’s Paradox of Slavery

• By Janneken Smucker
• May 9, 2011

Night Kitchen Interactive is delighted to again partner with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s Monticello to create three online exhibits centering on the enslaved community at Thomas Jefferson’s historic plantation. With an emphasis on the lives of enslaved families and the diaspora of descendants of those families, these online exhibitions will allow visitors to explore the lost world of the plantation’s hub, Mulberry Row, and examine the paradox of slavery at the home of the man who wrote "all men are created equal".

Renowned as Thomas Jefferson’s meticulously crafted mountaintop home, Monticello is also one of the best-preserved and best-documented examples of plantation slavery today. Monticello historians and archeologists have dedicated decades of research to uncovering the stories of the plantation and the people who lived and worked there. Through these three upcoming online exhibits, and corollary physical exhibits, they will share their findings with the general public in compelling new ways.

The three components include a Mulberry Row interactive exhibition sharing TJF’s new interpretation of the people and spaces of this center of agricultural and industrial enterprise, using 3D models, maps, and narratives; a new online home for Getting Word — a decades-long project tracing the stories of the descendants of Monticello’s enslaved families — that shares the transcripts, audio, and video selections from 170 oral history interviews, and presents an accessible entrée into the descendants’ family histories; and an online companion to a significant upcoming exhibition on Jefferson and slavery at Monticello.

This project is the latest in a collaboration between Night Kitchen Interactive and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that began in 2010 with the redesign of their primary web presence, including a new Drupal-based content management system and an award-winning online community.

 

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