Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed reflects on her personal history
Life stories from Martin Karplus, Steven Pinker, Helen Vendler, E.O. Wilson, and many more, in the Experience series. For as long as she can remember, Annette Gordon-Reed wanted to write. As a child, she loved words and books, especially biographies, and was all of 7 when she became an author herself. More than four decades later, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” brought a Pulitzer Prize and recognition as a major historian of U.S. slavery. Gordon-Reed’s path to Harvard — she is the Law School’s Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences — is every bit as interesting as her pioneering scholarship. Born in 1958 and educated in racially divided East Texas, she studied history at Dartmouth before choosing Harvard Law School over Yale (nearly breaking into a postal box when she realized she’d mailed the wrong acceptance letter). After stints as...