Lance Banning (January 24, 1942 – January 31, 2006) was an American historian who specialized in studying the politics of the United States' Founding Fathers.
Banning was a native of Kansas City, Missouri.
[1] He served as the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh.
[3] He was among the scholars who was commissioned by the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society in 1999 to review materials about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, after the 1998 DNA study was published indicating a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Eston Hemings, the youngest son.
The commission thought there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that Jefferson was the father of Hemings' children, and proposed his younger brother Randolph Jefferson, who had never seriously been put forward until after the 1998 DNA study.