9:31 a.m., April 17, 2009----Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor, writer and internationally respected authority on Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings, will deliver the University of Delaware Department of History's William Watson Harrington Lecture at 8 p.m., Thursday, May 7, in the Trabant University Center Theatre.

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She will speak on the topic “The Hemingses of Monticello: Writing the Life of an Enslaved Family.”

Gordon-Reed, who is a professor of law at the New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello (W.W. Norton, 2008).

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to the third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently.

Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to its dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. The story unfolds against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its revolution in 1789, Philadelphia in the 1790s, and plantation life at Monticello.

Gordon-Reed's other works include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia, 1997), Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001), which was co-authored with presidential confidant and long-time civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, and Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History (Oxford University Press, 2002).

The lecture is co-sponsored by the Women's Studies Interdisciplinary Program, the Black American Studies Program and the Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The William Watson Harrington Lecture honors the 1895 UD alumnus who served for 59 years on the University's board of trustees.