Resolution at James Madison’s Montpelier

Yesterday, sometime after my posting about the election of new board members at the Montpelier Foundation, there were more dramatic announcements.

The board elected a new chair: local business executive James French, who previously led the Montpelier Descendants Committee.

The board also accepted the resignation of the Foundation president for the past two years, who sided with the previous board chair during the controversy.

As interim president, the Foundation board appointed Elizabeth Chew, who was executive vice president and chief curator until last month when the previous administration fired her.

Though this spring’s news reports about tensions within the Montpelier governing bodies tended to be vague about the focus of those tensions, one or two made clear that the main conflict was between the previous board chair and French as a board member. With the new board members elected last week, one possible outcome I imagined was that both those antagonists would step back and the expanded group would find a compromise leader.

The election of French, departure of the president, and return of Chew make clear that the position of the Montpelier Descendants Committee and its supporters has prevailed.

In addition, the Montpelier Foundation elected other new officers:

• as vice chair, Stephanie Meeks, former head of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which formally owns Montpelier and opposed the Foundation’s recent moves to limit the Descendants Committee’s influence.
• as vice chair, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, professor of history at Ohio State and author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt.
• as secretary, Joshua D. Rothman, professor of history at the University of Alabama and author of Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 and The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America.
• as treasurer, Peter McHugh, a retired travel industry executive and previously vice chair.

There’s undoubtedly a lot of work to do at Montpelier, as at any major historical site. It will be very interesting to watch how the organization moves forward.