Train Depot at James Madison's Montpelier.
James Madison’s Montpelier will open its new exhibit, The Montpelier Train Depot: In the Time of Segregation, on February 21, 2010, in Orange, Va. Emmy-award-winning journalist and NPR and Fox News Analyst Juan Williams will be the featured speaker during the 2 p.m. exhibit opening. Lectures by Montpelier Research Coordinator C. Thomas Chapman, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Professor of History Peter Wallenstein, and a reception will follow.
The Depot exhibit will use the authentically restored 1910-era building to teach the public about the “Jim Crow” period of segregation in the space where it actually happened. The exhibit will use the old segregated “colored” and “white” waiting rooms to show the stark reality of racism that African-American travelers confronted during this period, and let visitors examine first-hand the fallacy of the notion of “separate but equal.” Visitors will also be able to view exhibits on the history of African-American life in Orange County and the country, and the history of the Train Depot and its place in the local community.
“The Montpelier Train Depot is one of many venues at Montpelier that tells the complicated story of race relations in America in the historic places where these events occurred,” said Michael C. Quinn, president of The Montpelier Foundation. African-American sites at Montpelier include: Mount Pleasant, where the first enslaved individuals settled the plantation; the South Yard and Madison mansion, where domestic slaves lived and worked; the Farm Complex, where agricultural slaves lived and worked in the tobacco and wheat fields; and the Slave Cemetery, where dozens of enslaved individuals are buried. Now, the 1910 Train Depot joins the Gilmore Cabin, a freedman’s farm built at the edge of a Civil War Trail, as a space to learn of the post-Emancipation and early 20th-century lives of African-American citizens.
The exhibit opening and lectures are sponsored by James Madison’s Montpelier and the Orange County African-American Historical Society. The lectures are organized by The Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier. The exhibit will be dedicated to the memory of Russell Coffin Childs, a former Montpelier project director, who had a strong commitment to communicating the role of African-American individuals in American history.
James Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution, was a slave owner when he was inaugurated in 1809; exactly 200 years later, America inaugurated an African-American president of the United States—a testament to the American people and the power of the Constitution Madison created. “James Madison built into the Constitution the ability for future generations to change it as they saw fit,” said Quinn. “These spaces at Montpelier display a sweep of American history that can serve to educate the public about the realities of our common past, but also about America’s ability to change for the better, because of the way Madison imagined the Constitution.”
William duPont built the Montpelier Train Depot in 1910 and it began postal operations in 1912. It served as a train station until 1974 and still serves as an active post office. In 2008, Montpelier commissioned the same master craftsmen who restored the Madisons’ home to authentically restore the Train Depot. The post office renovation was completed in August 2009.
Emmy-award-winning journalist Juan Williams regularly appears on National Public Radio and the Fox News Channel. He writes for the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly and Time. His many books include Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary and Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.
The exhibit opening will take place at the Montpelier Train Depot, located on Rt. 20, four miles south of Orange, Virginia (GPS address: 11350 Constitution Highway, Montpelier Station, VA 22957-9998). There is no cost to attend to the exhibit opening. Admission to the lectures and reception is $30 per person for members of the general public; $10 for Friends of Montpelier and members of the Orange County African-American Historical Society.
