After nearly two months of tension that included firings of high-level staff and public accusations of game-playing and racism against the Montpelier Foundation, the dispute between the foundation board and the Montpelier Descendants Committee has ended. At the May 16 foundation board meeting, the board voted in 11 new members recommended by the MDC, two more than had been previously promised.
“This historic and unprecedented vote by the Board of Directors means that the Foundation has achieved its long-sought goal of parity on the Board for descendants of Montpelier’s formerly enslaved population,” the foundation said in a release. “It has been a long and not always easy process to get to this point, but one result of the process has been the identification of an incredibly gifted and renowned slate of new Board members.”
“I just think all of us are surprised, thrilled and, you know, want to commend the board members, whatever their motivations were throughout,” says Greg Werkheiser, attorney for the MDC. “In the end, they took a hard vote. They did the right thing. And now, you know, the really hard work of rebuilding and restoring Montpelier’s finances, its reputation, its staff. That’s the next chapter.”
The stage for dispute was set last summer when the foundation board voted to rewrite its bylaws giving MDC authority to recommend at least half of the board members. In late March, the board reversed that historic vote and blamed the MDC for being uncollaborative.
“That’s not partnership. It’s not collegiality,” said former board chair Gene Hickok in an early April interview. Hickok resigned from the board at the Monday meeting.
Dozens of historic organizations, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier, condemned the foundation’s actions. Remaining Montpelier staff released a fiery statement alleging the board was putting historic preservation work at risk and violating federal law. Those employees and the MDC demanded the reinstatement of staff who’d been fired for speaking out in support of the descendants and a change in leadership.
Werkheiser says the new board will act quickly to rehire fired staff but declined to comment on the future of Montpelier’s embattled CEO Roy Young. Hickok and Young declined to be interviewed.
The 25-member foundation board now includes 14 people representing descendants of the enslaved at Montpelier. Among those new members are journalist Soledad O’Brien, UVA McIntire School of Commerce Dean Nicole Thorne Jenkins, and the Reverend Cornell William Brooks, Harvard professor of the practice of public leadership and social justice and former NAACP president and CEO.
“As our nation grapples with and even grieves over the racial injustices of this day, the work of the Montpelier Foundation is all the more important: teaching the lessons of the living legacy of President James Madison, studying the past and possibilities of our Constitution, and sharing across our Republic and beyond the ongoing story of those enslaved at Montpelier,” Brooks said in an MDC statement released after the May 16 vote.
The new board members were selected from a list of 20 names MDC recently put forth for consideration. Werkheiser says the nine individuals who were not named to the board will serve on an advisory council.
“It’s just further testament to the kind of egolessness of a lot of these public servants that they are willing to stay at the table, not sit on the bench,” he says. “They’re willing to put their shoulder to the wheel here as well. And trust me, all of them are going to be needed, as well as the returning staff, to put Montpelier back together again as quickly as possible.”
Courteney Stuart is the host of “Charlottesville Right Now” on WINA. You can hear her interview with Greg Werkheiser at wina.com.