The Missouri History Museum’s Jefferson statue gets context — and grapples with slavery

For more than 100 years, the Thomas Jefferson statue at the Missouri History Museum has stood largely without context. Erected in 1913 to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase and the 1904 World’s Fair, the 9-foot-tall sculpture in the museum’s lobby was the country’s first public memorial dedicated to its third president.

Now, after a two-year process, the Missouri History Museum is installing three interpretive panels that describe Jefferson’s complex legacy.

Even though Jefferson made public statements opposing slavery, calling it a “hideous blot,” his private actions told a different story. Over the course of his life, Jefferson enslaved more than 600 people and had six children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, the first when she was 16.