Another Dispatch from James Madison’s Montpelier

The Culpepper Star-Exponent is reporting on an odd wrinkle in the already public conflict over historical interpretation at Montpelier, James Madison’s slave-labor plantation.

The U.S. Postal Service closed the small post office near that historic site on short notice in June because, as Allison Brophy Champion reports, “it objected to a historical exhibit there.” The small building that housed the post office is part of the property of the Montpelier Foundation.

A spokesperson told the newspaper, “Service at Montpelier Station was suspended after it was determined the display at the site was unacceptable to the Postal Service.”

The display at issue consists of one panel on the outside of the building and several more inside—through a door separate from the one that went to the working post office.

The exhibit is titled “In the Time of Segregation,” and it describes segregation at that post office, opened in 1912, and in other services in the Jim Crow states.

Now one might at first guess that this display was a project of the new management at Montpelier. In May, as I described here and here, the Montpelier Foundation resolved months of internal controversy by seating eleven new members representing descendants of people enslaved at that plantation and others nearby, and installing new top management. The organization seemed poised to focus more attention on the site’s history of slavery and segregation.

In fact, the “In the Time of Segregation” exhibit was installed twelve years ago when the post office building reopened after Montpelier restored it. Only in June, within a month of the Montpelier Foundation management change, did some U.S. Postal Service manager deem that presentation of history “unacceptable.”

The post office’s local spokesperson declined to offer any more information and also claimed, “we attempted to address the issue with the property owner.” The head of the Montpelier Foundation told the Star-Exponent, “The U.S. Postal Service did not contact the current CEO or chief of staff, nor did it contact the previous CEO or chief of staff.”

The closure doesn’t affect Montpelier alone. About a hundred people had boxes at that post office because they don’t get mail delivered to their houses nearby. They “were supposed to get temporary postal boxes in Orange,” about four miles away, but that hasn’t happened. The Postal Service also promised a public meeting, but there’s no report of one taking place.

Furthermore, the area’s representative in Congress has told the U.S.P.S. district manager that “To close a post office, the agency is required to make its determination in writing, made available to the customers served by the office, and may not close it until 60 days afterward.” That clearly didn’t happen.