James Madison's Montpelier is purging descendant narratives
April 18, 2022 6:19 PM   Subscribe

James Madison's Montpelier plantation, a historic US Presidential site, has been widely praised for its progress interpreting the history of slavery and the nation's founding. In 2021, after years of intensive effort, its board took the groundbreaking step of giving "structural parity" to descendants of the 300 people enslaved at Montpelier by James Madison, with an equal number of seats on its board of directors as non-descendants (previously). But in the past four weeks, Montpelier's CEO and board chair have begun an effort to dismantle and reverse the new structures to limit descendant power on the board. And today, they fired and suspended key longtime staff members in retaliation for blowing the whistle and expressing public support for the descendants.

Background: Montpelier opened as a museum in 1983 with a focus on the founding father story of James Madison, and, like most plantation museums, not much mention of the enslaved people who built and ran it. The 2017 exhibit The Mere Distinction of Color first presented the history of enslavement and descendant stories at Montpelier and began a deep effort to reframe and revise the site interpretation along these more inclusive lines. That work led to a 2018 summit resulting in a landmark rubric, Engaging Descendant Communities, which immediately became the fieldwide standard for history work inclusive of descendants of slavery, helping to launch projects at many other sites. Gene Hickock became board chairman in 2019, just as the parity agreement was being outlined, and hired Roy Young in 2020 as CEO. In June 2021, the parity agreement was formally adopted. By March 2022 - 9 months later - Young and Hickok had rewritten the bylaws to eliminate the MDC from the board nomination process.

Additional links:
The Montpelier Descendants Committee is the formal association of descendants "devoted to restoring the narratives of enslaved Americans at plantation sites in Central Virginia, including but not limited to James Madison’s Montpelier, from the margins to the center of historical discourse." The MDC is the entity to which most descendants on the board are linked in the parity agreement, and which had been entitled under the former parity bylaws to nominate board members. They have now been stripped of that power.

This article sums up the internal dynamics and power moves well. MDC President James French puts it clearly: "“What [the Montpelier Board] would rather do is pick the leaders of the descendants themselves, the ones that they feel comfortable talking to, not the ones that have been elected by the 300-plus member descendant community."

In a rash of public condemnation very unusual for a field that's usually averse to controversy, a number of professional organizations have made strong statements against the move, including The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the site managed by the Montpelier Foundation and funded the summit and rubric; the Association of African American Museums; The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience; Society for American Archaeology ; the
American Alliance of Museums, and more.

A Change.org petition has nearly 7000 signatures. #FreeMontpelier is being used on Twitter to share information.
posted by Miko (24 comments total) 49 users marked this as a favorite
 
Eugene W. Hickok was George W. Bush's Deputy Secretary of Education, if anyone wants to know where he's coming from. Gross.
posted by Anonymous at 6:46 PM on April 18, 2022


I'd seen some murmurs about this around the edges of my professional networks but hadn't sat down to read up on it. Thanks for the informative post.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:04 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


This post is very well done, great work.

I'm still stunned by the audacity! Why is there always some man with his foot on the brake?

I often return to that everlasting Toni Morrison quote about "the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being."
posted by panhopticon at 7:13 PM on April 18, 2022 [45 favorites]


UGH
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 7:40 PM on April 18, 2022


It’s just another reminder that the raisin d’eterr ff these institutions is concentrating power and wealth, and any deviation from that plan will not be tolerated by those with power and wealth.

Has there ever been a more literal example of “the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house”?
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:36 PM on April 18, 2022 [24 favorites]


I'm still stunned by the audacity! Why is there always some man with his foot on the brake?

I think they prefer "standing athwart history yelling "stop!".
posted by Gelatin at 5:58 AM on April 19, 2022 [6 favorites]


Interesting. Having worked both sides (progressive and conservative) on bipartisan issues, I usually find rifts like this come down to money. Looking at their publicly available revenue and expenses sheet in Guidestar from 2018, it looks like they had a serious deficit (revenue: $6,741,246/expenses: $10,516.263). It is 4 years later and I wonder if the new Board had a mandate to balance their budget. Having to cut programs and go down to the operating bone to keep a place afloat can lead to harsh disagreements especially on ideology. I really hope they come to a compromise as it is a great piece of American history and I am in favor of publicly enjoyed protected land.
posted by ichimunki at 7:39 AM on April 19, 2022


Or maybe it's almost 250 years of slavery, institutional racism, and a rise in white nationalist fascism.

But who can tell, gotta listen to both sides amirite?
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 7:59 AM on April 19, 2022 [17 favorites]


There's nothing in a mandate to balance the budget that requires a board to change its nominating procedures.
posted by Miko at 8:08 AM on April 19, 2022 [23 favorites]


Having to cut programs and go down to the operating bone to keep a place afloat can lead to harsh disagreements especially on ideology

there's a mindblowing quote from one of the articles Miko posted that reads

Hickok put him on notice that the MDC was just one of various stakeholder groups at Montpelier, such as the Virginia Thoroughbred Project, an organization that cares for retired racehorses. French said, “I just knew in that very moment, when the descendants of the people who built Montpelier were compared to horses, that we had a difficult road ahead of us.”

it's extremely minimizing to say that this is just about money when the ideological differences are as stark as this. if you ignore the ideology, it's as if to say that it doesn't matter that the voice of the descendants of the enslaved is equal to or lesser than a fancy horse stable, this is just a matter of accounting

if the descendants of those whose fully exploited labor built Montpelier and elevated Madison into the world of the political elite would rather the entire project disintegrate into nothing, leaving an abandoned husk of a building, then that should fully be within their rights. anything less is just stark evidence that we continue to exist in a white supremacist society
posted by paimapi at 8:27 AM on April 19, 2022 [23 favorites]


If this was because of a budget issue, perhaps they could have spent less than a reported $1.65M in "fundraising" (i.e. gala dinners for rich white folk).

Spoiler alert: it's not a budget issue.
posted by basalganglia at 9:09 AM on April 19, 2022 [12 favorites]


This! This is why we can't have nice things.
posted by allthinky at 11:29 AM on April 19, 2022


I feel like the whole board should be listed:
http://www.montpelier.org/about/meet-our-board
posted by sepviva at 3:14 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I feel like the whole board should be listed:
http://www.montpelier.org/about/meet-our-board


I know two people on that board....Stephanie Meeks and Tom Mayes, both from the National Trust (Meeks is the former CEO). Mayes is the Trust's ex officio representative (and their General Legal Counsel) and he voted along with the two members of the Descendants Committee against the bylaw change.
posted by Preserver at 6:30 PM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


The Trust has been very clearly against this move.
posted by Miko at 7:02 PM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


Another article, this time from Charles Pierce: Let's Not Throw Away the Progress Towards Historical Justice Made at James Madison's Estate
posted by TedW at 7:21 AM on April 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


It is also worth reading the letter that the National Trust sent to Hickock ahead of the bylaw change vote. It includes the information that the Trust brought in independent mediators to try to resolve issues between the Foundation and the Descendants Committee, and...reading between the lines...the Board wasn't interested in reaching a compromise.

Also, this: "Most critically, this commitment [to treat the MDC as the sole representative organization of the descendant community] acknowledged the right of the descendant community to define itself, rather than to be defined by the Foundation." [original emphasis]
posted by Preserver at 9:28 AM on April 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


One of the things that strikes me about the hypocrisy is that there is nothing preventing the Foundation from nominating anyone they want to to their own 50% of seats. So they could indeed invite descendants who are not part of the MDC; there's no problem with that. Of course, that would result in the board being majority Black - and I doubt that was where the Foundation wanted to end up.
posted by Miko at 10:09 AM on April 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Preserver, please tell them thanks! I was on my phone or I would have added notes on who voted how, so apologies for the accidental implication that the whole board was the problem.
posted by sepviva at 2:45 PM on April 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


Preserver, please tell them thanks! I was on my phone or I would have added notes on who voted how, so apologies for the accidental implication that the whole board was the problem.

No worries! I was actually trying to find information online about who voted for and against, and was relieved to see that Tom had voted against it. He gave the keynote address at our statewide non-profit conference a few years back. If you do have those notes on how everyone voted, I'd love to see that.
posted by Preserver at 5:15 PM on April 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


Here's an update. The picture becomes clearer and clearer.
posted by Miko at 7:49 AM on April 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


….not really.

I mean, yes, racism, obviously these guys are racist assholes.

But I have to wonder what happened between last year when the original power-sharing agreement was struck, and the recent reaction. If these people weren’t prepared to surrender power, why did they publicly agree to do so? Were they really naive/blind/foolish enough to believe that they could hand half the seats on the board to an outside organization and this would result in no change in priorities for the organization, no conflict in goals? It looks a thousand times worse for them to make this offer and then fuck up the implementation of it this way.

Could they really have been racist enough to think that new board members wouldn’t want to change anything and would meekly agree to leave everything the same? Because that is so fucking dumb….

Once again I am unsurprised by racism and shocked by stupidity.

Also big props to whomever was described as ‘a Black man as having intimidated him with a "Frederick Douglass stare” one of the best unintentional compliments I’ve ever seen.

Ps - I’ve consumed some of the genealogical content from Monticello and they seem to do pretty well in collaboration with African American descendants, although of course I don’t know anything about the behind the scenes stuff.
posted by bq at 9:30 AM on April 23, 2022


Good news: In reversal, Montpelier appoints directors from descendants of the enslaved:
The board that oversees James Madison’s Montpelier estate has chosen 11 new directors recommended by a group representing descendants of enslaved workers, claiming a milestone in diversity at a major historical site.

Monday’s vote creates full parity for the descendants of the enslaved in the leadership of the Montpelier Foundation, and amounts to a sharp turnaround from the board’s effort in March to repudiate the Montpelier Descendants Committee.
posted by peeedro at 5:17 PM on May 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


I did get some scuttlebutt that there was an issue with one problematic board member over who counts as a "legitimate" descendant. I am not sure what behind the scenes brokering went on to achieve the reversal, but it's a serious and welcome victory. I expect this to be a case study in shared authority for a long time to come.
posted by Miko at 9:00 AM on May 18, 2022


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