More Frictions at James Madison’s Montpelier

Late last month I passed on news that the Montpelier Foundation had changed its bylaws to reverse an earlier decision assigning the Montpelier Descendants Committee authority to name three members to the foundation board.

The Descendants Committee, made up of people who claim descent from the workers enslaved at Montpelier in the late 1700s and early 1800s, protested that decision. Most of the Montpelier staff joined them.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that the foundation had fired four top staffers for publicly objecting to the bylaw change. Among the people removed were:

• executive vice president and chief curator Elizabeth Chew
• director of archaeology Matt Reeves, who has worked at the site for twenty-two years
• director of communications Christy Moriarty
• events manager Alex Walsh

Two other employees involved in the archeology program have been suspended.

The Montpelier Descendants Committee added that foundation president Roy Young fired those employees “After making repeated public statements that the Foundation would not retaliate against staff for opposing the Board’s abandonment of its commitment” to work with the committee.

The Montpelier Foundation manages the property, once owned by President James Madison and then his widow Dolley Madison, for its actual owner, the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The trust already criticized the bylaws change. In response to the firings, it issued a statement:

The National Trust strongly condemns these actions against highly regarded and nationally recognized professionals, which will impede the effective stewardship of Montpelier and diminish important public programming at this highly significant historic site. . . . these and other recent actions by the Foundation lead us to question whether a resolution is possible under the current leadership of the Foundation.

Those current leaders of the Montpelier Foundation continue to state that they are proceeding with the plan announced last year to have half the board of directors be descendants of enslaved workers. The Descendants Committee doesn’t stand in the way of that plan, which it helped to develop; it supports that goal and proposed many possible board members.

Indeed, the board can have up to twenty-five members, or nine more than currently. The present board could appoint nine new members from among the descendants, with or without the support of the three board members originally nominated by the Descendants Committee, and immediately achieve the stated goal of parity.

Instead, at this point the site’s management appears to be decimating its respected staff, alienating the historical community, and turning off a fair proportion of potential visitors.