Getting Word

The Getting Word African American Oral History Project preserves the histories of Monticello’s enslaved families and their descendants.

Through over 100 interviews with participants and countless hours of research, remarkable stories have emerged to form an archive of freedom.

Hear the Stories

“Keep The Stories Alive” — Ellen Craft Dammond and Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

“Why Did He Go?” — Brown Colbert and William Webb

“I Can Tell Them About My Family” — Martha Hearns Boston

“It Had To Be Done Very Secretly” — Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

“That’s What’s Been Passed On To Us” — Paula Roberts Henderson, Ellen Roberts Hodnett and Robin Roberts-Martin

“She Must Have Been Quite Something” — Sally Hemings and Julia Jefferson Westerinen

“What They Did To Make This Country What It Is” — Diana Redman

“Far Beyond Her Time” — Marion Elizabeth Carter and Nancy Colbert Scott

“She Was In An Untenable Position” — Sally Hemings and Diana Redman

“She Was Ridiculed” — Shay Banks-Young and Sally Hemings

“Their Music Was So Beautiful” — Robert Scott, Yvonne Mitchell Simkins and Marion Elizabeth Carter

“Embrace Your Past” — Joyce Dorsey Harrod

“She Was Good To Everybody” — Ozella Barnaby Harvey

“She Set Up A Scholarship” — Clara Lee Fisher

“Lessie Always Petted Me” — Lessie Young Clay, Roger McWhorter and Cary Hotchkiss II

“All You Have To Do Is Look Around” — Maxcine Mercer Sterling

“This Church Was Built From The Ground” — Martha Fletcher, George Southerland and Peter Fossett

“She Was Frightened All The Time” — Marion Elizabeth Carter and Nancy Colbert Scott