Some histories of archaeology and bioarchaeology in the United States claim that the first American archaeologist was Founding Father and third president, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who excavated, or more accurately desecrated, Indigenous burials. Sometimes these histories acknowledge the genocide of Native Americans, but they fail to address Jefferson as a racialist and slave owner. In Jefferson’s only book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), he speculated on the deficiency and degeneracy of African descended peoples. This book served as a founding text for Black scientific discourse in the United States. In response, Black scientists undertook alternative knowledge production, challenging biocentric and positivist science in the pursuit of freedom, a tradition scholar Brit Russert calls “fugitive science.” A fugitive approach considers Blackness outside of how it has been defined, portrayed, constrained, and erased by colonialism and white supremacy. In the challenge to Jefferson’s paternity at hand, I consider more closely Jefferson as a slave owner and interrogate his perspectives on Black people and Blackness. I revisit classic mortuary archaeology while paying special attention to violence against Black women, and argue that claiming Jefferson as an intellectual ancestor has normalized the exploitation of Black bodies and heritage in American archaeology and bioarchaeology.