CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When they were young, their parents told them they were related to a famous man, a slave owner who became president. They called it a family secret, since outsiders would never believe that black children could be descendants of a president.

But some did talk about that distant ancestor, Thomas Jefferson, and were laughed at or called liars by friends and even teachers. No one is calling them liars anymore.

Nearly five years after DNA testing provided compelling — some argue overwhelming — evidence that Jefferson fathered at least one child with a young slave named Sally Hemings, about 150 of her family's descendants gathered this past weekend for their first reunion on the grounds of Jefferson's hilltop plantation, Monticello.

They gathered by what is believed to be one of Monticello's slave graveyards to pay tribute to their clan's matriarchs, Sally and her mother, Elizabeth Hemings.

Then they moved to a hallowed spot that, before Sunday, had been closed to most of them: the Jefferson family cemetery. They posed for photos, laid flowers on tombstones and gently touched the simple stone obelisk above the third president's grave.

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But beneath the uplifting veneer of the weekend's reunion lies an increasingly rancorous battle between the Hemings clan and some of Jefferson's long-established descendants over who can claim the Jefferson birthright. At its heart, the fight is a metaphor for Americans' deeply conflicted views on race, family and Jefferson himself.

On one side, many of the Hemingses have argued for an all-inclusive definition of family that would encompass the offspring of all seven of Sally's children. Some have argued that the group should be expanded to include all the descendants of Elizabeth Hemings as well.

The DNA test concluded that there was strong evidence that a Jefferson male, probably Thomas himself, fathered one of Sally's sons, Eston. That conclusion has been endorsed by the National Genealogical Society and a number of prominent Jefferson scholars, many of whom had rejected the Hemingses' claim before.

But the Monticello Association, which operates the Jefferson cemetery and represents descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha, has not accepted the DNA findings as conclusive.

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