My Name Is Sally Hemings

Get your violins out, your flutes and cellos

As I recount my days back in Monticello

The year America breaks from Europe’s chains

I’m still a slave shackled in America’s chains

And I’ll make it plain I was more than a slave

A founding father found me and he couldn’t behave

Y’all can call him what you want, America’s son

I call him a rapist under Virginia’s sun

Put him in the books for the country he claimed

But me, I’m just a blip y’all don’t know my name

Know nothing about from whence I came

Call me Sally or Sarah, some say I’m to blame

But I ain’t ask for this I was part of a deal

So hear my story as a slave just recountin’ the real

While Jefferson was workin’ so hard to plant nation

I was his concubine on his plantation

Tried to make it slick and just call me a nurse

While I was savin’ lives they put my soul in a hearse

Doin’ nothing but my best to help heal Mary

Then she go to sleep and I’m screamin’ hail Marys

Prayin’ I won’t be raped by this man so scary

Y’all venerate this man but on the contrary

I was in the room taking care of wardrobe

He comin’ from behind and he never wore clothes

Now he comin’ from behind and I’m caught in the throws

I’m special, presidential w-h-o

R-e, he birthed nation, I birthed his kids see

Y’all see his face everywhere but mine don’t exist see

I’m Sally Hemings case you didn’t know

And I was more than a slave more than Jefferson’s ho

So know my story it’s an American classic

How I survived for centuries from life so tragic

See I rep for my sisters that you’ll never know

The ones mastered by the masters, sexed on the low

Y’all say it was just a sign of the times

Then you rewrite history, rewrite the lines

But I ain’t ask for this and some say it’s my fault

Look down at my sisters now it’s still their fault

Janet sabotaged her bra, it wasn’t Justin

Rihanna pissed off Chris Brown—musta been

Tina Ike-d up just cause she tried to mic-up

Anita knocked off the Hill she tried to rise up

Halle Berry had it comin’ who she think she be

Damn… in retro she kinda look like me

But I digress, I distress when I have to digest

Centuries of women being blamed for men stress

But until we tell our story won’t nobody care

So sisters rise up and tell your tales without fear