In episode four of the Founding Fathers' Legacy Series, Former Washington D.C Mayor Sharon Pratt engages in a deeper dive around Madison’s legacy – in particular how his legacy is complicated by his enslavement of men, women, and children on his plantation.
In 2019, the Montpelier Descendants Committee was established to ensure the narratives of the enslaved at Montpelier are remembered and honored. The Montpelier Descendants Committee is the “nation’s first independent, descendant led organization to be associated with a major historic site.” Until recently, the histories and memories of enslaved peoples have been amazingly excluded from reflection and interpretation at any of the iconic founding father sites, while the question of who gets to tell history has always been – and likely will always be – rife with tensions.
Sharon Pratt speaks with James French, chairman of the Montpelier Foundation Board of Directors and Founding Chairman of the Montpelier Descendants Committee.
For the final episode on James Madison, James French joins Michael Steele and Mayor Pratt at Montpelier for a live event, with Dr. Hasan Jeffries, Dr. Tyson Reeder and Dr. Holly Shulman.
In 2019, the Montpelier Descendants Committee was established to ensure the narratives of the enslaved at Montpelier are remembered and honored. The Montpelier Descendants Committee is the “nation’s first independent, descendant led organization to be associated with a major historic site.” Until recently, the histories and memories of enslaved peoples have been amazingly excluded from reflection and interpretation at any of the iconic founding father sites, while the question of who gets to tell history has always been – and likely will always be – rife with tensions.
Sharon Pratt speaks with James French, chairman of the Montpelier Foundation Board of Directors and Founding Chairman of the Montpelier Descendants Committee.
For the final episode on James Madison, James French joins Michael Steele and Mayor Pratt at Montpelier for a live event, with Dr. Hasan Jeffries, Dr. Tyson Reeder and Dr. Holly Shulman.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This is the Founding Father's Legacy series. I'm Sharon Pratt and in this episode
I will be joined by James French, chairman of the Mountpellier Foundation Board of
Directors and founding Chairman of the MountpellierDescendants Committee. Over the last three episodes,
(00:24):
we have learned more about James Madisonand the world from which he came,
his family, his home, hiseducation. We have delved into the
cultural political environment during Revolutionary America asit emerged into becoming the United States of
America. We have discussed the contextsfor the decisions the Founding Fathers made when
(00:49):
breaking away from Great Britain then shapinga governing structure invited in the US Constitution.
Today, we engage in a deeperdive around Madison's legacy, in particular
how his legacy is complicated by hisenslavement of men, women and children on
(01:14):
his plantation. In twenty nineteen,the Mountpelier Descendants Committee was established. It
was established to ensure the narratives ofthe enslaved at Montpelier remembered and also honored.
The Mountpelier Descendants Committee is the nation'sfirst independent descendant led organization to be
(01:37):
associated with a major historic site.The creation and focus of the Descendants Committee
was not without controversy. The MuntpelierDescendants Committee and the Multpelier Foundation Board clashed
publicly over representation on the board andhow to best tell the stories of generation
(02:00):
of enslavement. Finally, in Juneof twenty twenty two, the two agreed
there should be parody in terms ofrepresentation of the Mountpelier Board as well as
representation and Mountpelier programs. Until recently, the histories and memories of enslaved people
(02:22):
have been amazingly excluded from reflection,interpretation, even comment at any of the
iconic founding Father's sites, and thequestion of who gets to tell the history
has always been and likely will alwaysbe, rife with tensions. But in
(02:43):
pursuing a better understanding of the enslavedpeople's lives at Mountpelier, it helps us
form a more complete view of historyand grapple with the paradox of liberty,
that which is conshrined in the Constitutionbut denied too many. Thank you James
French for joining us today. Whenone looks back at the history of the
(03:08):
early history of the country, it'ssort of a startling to come to appreciate
to what extent owning having enslaved peoplewas so essential to the net worth,
particularly of these plantation owners such asGeorge Washington, such as Jefferson, and
(03:30):
in the case of Madison, thatit had having enslaved people had more valued
or contributed greatly to the more soto their net worth than owning land.
Is that a fair characterization, Yes, it is. This was an economy
that was based upon slave labor,and so the wealth of colonial Virginia and
(03:54):
throughout the slaveholding South was generated byenslaved Africans and then eventually those who were
born here so they became inslaved Americans. And then much of the wealth in
the North was tied to processing theexports from the South, so you know,
(04:14):
textiles and things of that nature,and trade and the slave trade which
was you know, the triangular trade, which involved a building of great shipping
lines and shipping companies. So theentire economy was was part of the larger
Atlantic economy, which existed essentially toum to uh produce highly profitable crops,
(04:42):
beginning with sugar, you know,and this goes all the way back to
you know, the fifteenth century inCape Verdi in Sautome where the first sugar
plantation was was was um was createdand that that by the Portuguese and then
that migra to Brazil and the Spanishgot involved in all the other European powers
(05:05):
vied for that, and it thenmigrated to the Caribbean, and that that's
when the British got involved in.The British built the wealthiest um plantation economy
in the world at that time onthe tiny little island of Barbados, which
was, you know, the sizeof you know, a little part of
(05:26):
Long Island and UM and and thateventually spread to British North America. So
by the time it came to BritishNorth America, these these these the the
economics and the model of it hadbeen really perfected of taking people from Africa
UM, creating profitable plantations and producingcrops that were then essentially sold to the
(05:53):
North United States and then to EuropeUM. So it was it was centrally
essentially tied to to slave labor.So it was James Madison, I mean
conflicted about this is that your impression, I think we have to be careful
when we asked that question. Thereason is that if you look at the
(06:17):
historical record at the time. Idon't think it was a matter of individual
morality. Of course, people knewit was wrong. It was it was
against precepts of religion. It wasin the historical record that people understood that
slavery was an evil, and itwas understood widely that this was something that
(06:43):
could perhaps spell the doom of theexperiment in democracy and the existence of the
colony and then eventually of the youngnation that was founded the reality. And
James Madison himself, yes, heabsolutely knew that slavery was morally reprehensible,
(07:05):
and there's quite quite a record ofthat. But Madison, like many of
the other planters of that era,compromised with that, and you know,
their their wealth was tied up intoit. And so one of the things
that happened was that explanations were created, justifications, and one of the justifications
(07:30):
was, frankly, that the peoplewho were being enslaved were not fully human
and so um the conventional morality didnot apply to them, and that this
was somehow, this was a benightedpeople who were somehow um uplifted, if
you will, by European civilization orthe Enlightenment, and that on that basis
(07:55):
of kind of this benign view ofslavery as being an institution that in some
how uplifts people. It was justifiedon that basis. But again, that
type of view of justifying of slaverywas born of necessity. What was driving
(08:16):
many of the individual decisions and thenthose social structures behind that decision was the
fact that this was an extremely profitableeconomic structure. Tell me about the Descendants
Committee. The Descendants Committee is aunique organization. It was created in the
(08:37):
summer of twenty nineteen at the JuneteenthGathering of that year, and it was
created by at a gathering of descendantsof known Madison area descendants. About three
hundred people were invited by the MontpelierFoundation and they gathered to they were asked
(09:00):
by Montpelier to consider an institutional relationshipbetween the descendants and the foundation. And
not coincidentally, the year before,a groundbreaking document had been created also at
Mountpelio called the Rubric at Best Practicesof Engaging Descendant Communities. We just call
(09:20):
it the rubric, And the Rubricwas developed by a gathering of about fifty
fifty seven scholars the year before,and they looked at really kind of what
was the current state of the relationshipbetween descendants of the enslaved and the institutions
(09:41):
responsible for managing presidential sites and youknow, in a more broad sense,
managing sites and enslavement. And atthe time that the the what the kind
of the the normal state of affairswas that many of these sites had no
(10:05):
formal relationship with the descendants, andthose that did often had relationships that could
really be described as opportunistic or tokened, meaning that they would be brought in
on a case by case basis incase there's a need for some type of
(10:28):
speaker and event or some fundraising need. What those relationships had in common was
a lack of shared authority, trueauthority and how the site has run.
The rubric essentially is a document thatespouses something that we call that it caused
(10:48):
structural parity, and structural parity essentiallysays, boiling it down, it says
that the best practice between an institutionand the descendant community would be authority equally
shared authority between the institution itself andthe descendant community at every level of the
organization, so from the board levelto senior staff, junior staff, and
(11:13):
even volunteers. And interns that thereshould be shared authority. The reasoning is
that that when you don't have sharedauthority, you really bump into the question
of who has the authority to interprethistory, Whose history is being told,
(11:33):
whose history is being untold, andwhat are the kind of the patterns of
that are there are there historic sustainedexclusions from telling certain parts of the history
of a given site. And theanswer, obviously it was yes. So
in many sites and I won't nameany sites in particular, but I'll just
(11:54):
say that in many sites, slaverywas seen as kind of a um,
you know, an unfortunate consequence ofof of the good history that happened here
quote unquote, and so um,you know, it was an unfortunate part
of history. But you know,look at look at the iconic kind of
(12:18):
world changing documents or or you know, um concepts that emerge from this other
separate history. And of course that'snot a history works. History is not
divided into chambers or into silos.So um, the Descendants Committee wanted to
bring all of the sides of historytogether and have it around a single table.
(12:41):
So um, imagine a boardroom.You know, you have a table
people in a boardroom and those whohave traditionally been at that table are sitting
there and a new group walks in, and that new group has just as
much skin of the game, ifnot more, than the pre existing board
board does. And one view,and this I think was perhaps the prevailing
(13:05):
view for some, was that peoplewho are seated at the board prior to
the new group coming in would bedisempowered. But in fact, what happens
is that, you know, power, like history itself, is not divisible,
you know, in the sense,it's not like a pizza, you
know, cut it up and divideit and pass it out. In fact,
(13:26):
when a new group comes in andsits at a table, that everyone
becomes more powerful because the new group, of course brings the power and the
insights and the perspectives and the historythat they have and they join it together.
So the institution itself, if youyou know, to continue the analogy,
the institution being that table is empoweredby structural parity. So now we
(13:48):
are able to bring new perspectives andnew new resources. So that's what the
that's what the Descendants Committee was formedto do. It took us a while,
of course, um, but um, that was the purpose so the
purpose was to offer a pathway toachieve structural parody UM, to implement the
(14:11):
rubric, and to be the firstinstitution in the country to do so.
That's what we did. How didyou navigate this? It was not an
easy road, UM, and thatwas very unfortunate because we always thought as
an opportunity to bring people together totell richer, more accurate history. UM.
(14:33):
And you know, history has tobe truthful for it to have any
meaning. And UM. Initially that'show we had hoped and expected it would
go. UM. It did notgo that way UM for long. Unfortunately,
some people were UM were threatened byUM an institutional relationship, and so
(14:56):
we had some you know, wewasted some time with trying to get it
back off on the rail. Wedid get it back on the rails,
and in May of twenty twenty two, we needed the what I consider to
be the most prominent and UM qualifiedan exciting board of any museum in the
(15:22):
country. The parody is very mucha Madisonian principle. So by that I
mean that it allows the descendants ofthe enslaved not only to elect themselves to
be on the board, but toelect their representatives. So that's a very
Madisonian kind of democratic principle. Soto be a member of the descendants committee,
(15:43):
do you have to prove that youcan't you know that you had ancestors
who were enslaved. I get,I gather it's not just at Mountpellier but
elsewhere in the neighborhood. And whatit's a broad definition of neighborhood. But
is that So let's let's let's backup and see what what do we mean
by the neighborhood and what do wemean by um by relation. So when
(16:11):
you talk about a plantation, you'retalking about the property that belongs to an
individual at a given period of time. So Madison Montpular today is about twenty
sixty acres. Back then it wasbigger. But Madison himself, um,
you know, bought and soul propertyall over the area. And they weren't
(16:33):
all contiguous pieces of property. Buthis family enslaved people who themselves had relationships
and families that went across the changingboundaries of his personal property. So what's
more important the property boundary or thefamilies. The same thing goes with Madison's
(16:56):
family himself. So Madison there werethree main family's background um at this time
there was a Madison family, theNewman family, the Barber family, and
there were there were several other families, but those were the three largest landhowned
land holding families. All of thosefamilies intermarried over the centuries, and so
(17:17):
did the people that they enslaved.So the rubric does not look at Madison's
property boundaries in any given period intime to be the jeff and the defining
kind of qualifying criteria for who isa descendant who isn't. What the rubric
does is it is it looks atthe ecosystem in which those plantations are,
(17:44):
you know, partake. They're partof an ecosystem. And so by ecosystem
we mean an economy, we meana shared culture, a shared history,
and all of those things go beyondthe the property boundary of any given landowner
for white again, for white familiesand black families. So we know,
(18:07):
for example, that James Madison sistermarried a Newman, the Newman's. The
Newmans brought in enslaved people into thatmarriage, and that some of the owners,
so to speak, of those enslavedpeople, impregnated those the people who
(18:30):
came into that marriage. One ofthose enslaved people. His name is Rachel.
I'm a descendant of Rachel. Rachel'sson was my great great great grandfather,
and I'm sitting in the house thathe built right now as we speak.
You obviously are committed to the notionthat that full history will empower us
(18:53):
and enrich us. How I mean, for example, some of the noted
historians Madison and Early America, howdo they embrace this notion? Not everybody
is comfortable with this full history,and not everybody is comfortable with what a
pivotal role this experience, especially theexperience of slavery, had in defining early
(19:19):
America. That's a hard one toswallow. It is. So the way
that I look at it is thatgoing back to this notion of historically,
who has been allowed to have asay in interpreting history, who sits at
the table? And that's a veryimportant notion, because if people who have
(19:45):
never shared that table with others whohave you know, and I like to
say that the descendants don't just haveskin, you know, skin in the
game, they have bones in theground. If they've never had that experience
with sharing a table of decision makingan authority, then then the criticism of
kind of of orthodoxy I feel isa little bit skewed. It's uninformed,
(20:11):
if you will. What the majorityof historians that I have spoken with fully
understand that there's an ecosystem that Montpelierand other surrounding plantations are part of.
Madison's family did not locate there forthe scenery, which is gorgeous. They
(20:33):
came there because the land itself isextremely fertile, one of the most fertile
soil deposits in the world, frankly, and it was available, and so
that's where they were able to practice. There their fortune of enslaving people planting
(20:56):
crops, having those people plant crops, getting wealthy, building in their political
and social capital, and becoming leadersof the country. That would not be
possible without the people who did thework and created that wealth. Now,
the irony is that the history thatwas produced at Mountpelier is one of the
(21:17):
greatest paradoxes in the world. Sowe have, as we all know,
the Constitution were many of the conceptswere were came to light if you will,
on the second floor of the houseat Mountpelier, and those were deep,
deeply researched, eloquently and carefully constructedof ideas that would guarantee liberty and
(21:47):
freedom. The paradox is that itwas those ideas came into the world because
they were They were enabled, ifyou will, economically and socially by an
economy built upon the opposite of freedomand liberty, which is slavery. So
you have the paradox of freedom andits opposite, slavery, coexisting in the
(22:12):
same space. The majority of thehistorians that I've spoken to are interested in
that paradix. How do you understandand interpret that paradox, and perhaps if
you can do that, you canthen become interested in the identities of the
two hundred and fifty people were buriedon the property and on marked graves in
(22:33):
a forest, and understand what weretheir contributions to not just the wealth of
Madison, but to his culture andhis ideas and to his intellect. What
role did that community play in everythingthat became the legacy of James Madison.
Madison's the Madison's family were essentially forevery Madison, there were twenty eight enslaved
(23:00):
people over the years. What thatmeans to me is that Madison and his
family, and his father and hisfather's father essentially lived in African American communities.
And they were not fealed off fromthe culture, from the from the
intellectual discourse, from certainly not fromthe wealth it was generated. But they
(23:25):
were part of a community. Itwas not an equal community, It was
an oppressive community. It was nota fair community. Um. But ideas
and other other aspects of of ofthat of that community flowed in every direction,
not just one. So I feelthat, you know, the exciting
(23:48):
prospect for historians today, the mostexciting, you know possibility is to really
mind that paradox, to understand thefull and true dimensions of our origin story.
We really deal in something different,fundamentally different than the kind of the
(24:15):
daily back and forth of political debate. What we deal in, and I
was getting a little bit, Iwas getting towards us earlier, what we
deal in this history. And wehave something to offer the nation by enriching
our history with more information. Andwhat that allows Americans to do is to
(24:38):
become more resilient, because if youcan see the deep structural underpinnings of our
history, you can accept the goodalong with the bad, and you can
understand a lot more about how wegot to where we are today, what
(25:00):
we hope to do at Montpelier isto become a place where all Americans,
regardless of political viewpoints, can comeand benefit in some way and engage in
some way that they've never done sobefore with the origin story of our nation.
And that's something that's really really differentthan the debates that are taking place
(25:26):
outside of the museum. There alwayswill be a partisan kind of back and
forth in this country, but therethe space for a museum. Its ability
to add to American discourse, Ilike to feel is on a higher level
(25:48):
than whatever winds are blowing across thepolitical landscape because what we can do like
no other institution is we can digin the ground. Literally. We have
a world class archaeology department, andwe did in the ground, and the
public can come and do this.We have archaeology expeditions all the time and
(26:10):
then come out and they can,you know, put a put a shovel
in the ground and pick something upand they always will find something and they're
they're the next person to have touchedthis artifact until it was lost sometime in
the seventeen hundreds. And the historyitself is undeniable. It's sitting there right
(26:32):
in your hand, and when youtouch something so tangible as an artifact of
history, it's only human nature toask where did it come from, what
role did it play, why isit there? And what does it mean?
And that's a really powerful experience.So if you can ground truth history,
(26:53):
you can interpret it and you canmake you know, you can reconcile
yourselves to its existence. And that'swhat we want Multila to do. How
do you think Madison would think aboutthings as they are today? Madison on
his deathbed, he was concerned aboutthe unity of the country, and he
(27:15):
was not in any way naive.He knew what the weaknesses of the country
were. He said that we facedbasically two crisis. One was the crisis
of slavery, and the other wasa crisis of staying united as a single
country. Now in his time,he did not resolve the issue of slavery.
He left that for future generations andwe're still reconciling ourselves with the repercussions
(27:41):
of that today. But I thinkthat for that second objective that he had,
the second one that he felt was, you know, our charge as
Americans. I feel that the legacythat he left behind literally in the ground,
compliments his record in a way thatwe can understand our origins and come
(28:04):
together and reconcile ourselves with it andbe a stronger people as a result.
For our final episode on James Madison, James French joins Michael Steel and me
at Montpellier for a live event withdoctor Hassan Jefferies, Doctor Tyson Reader,
(28:30):
and doctor Holly Schulman. Be certainto tune in for our discussion unpacking the
complex truth behind the legacy and wheredo we go from here. Thank you
for joining us as we explore thelegacy of the three founding fathers who brought
the capital to the banks of thePotomac. Stay tuned as we dive into
(28:52):
the lives of Thomas Jefferson as welland then George Washington. This episode was
edited by Baywulf Rockland, Roosevelt Heineand Lisa Shudy of Two Squared Media Productions.
Special thanks to Isabel Dorville for herresearch and production support, Folk Diversity
(29:18):
for ensuring purposeful conversations when reflecting onour complex history and basking strategies for engaging
our stakeholder community. Thanks as wellto Joy Ford, Austin, Jody Simuda,
and Amy Anthony at the Institute ofPolitics, Policy and History. We
(29:41):
are grateful to the Kellogg Foundation fortheir generous support of this founding father's Legacy
series. Be sure to subscribe whereveryou listen to podcasts.
This is the Founding Father's Legacy series. I'm Sharon Pratt and in this episode
I will be joined by James French, chairman of the Mountpellier Foundation Board of
Directors and founding Chairman of the MountpellierDescendants Committee. Over the last three episodes,
(00:24):
we have learned more about James Madisonand the world from which he came,
his family, his home, hiseducation. We have delved into the
cultural political environment during Revolutionary America asit emerged into becoming the United States of
America. We have discussed the contextsfor the decisions the Founding Fathers made when
(00:49):
breaking away from Great Britain then shapinga governing structure invited in the US Constitution.
Today, we engage in a deeperdive around Madison's legacy, in particular
how his legacy is complicated by hisenslavement of men, women and children on
(01:14):
his plantation. In twenty nineteen,the Mountpelier Descendants Committee was established. It
was established to ensure the narratives ofthe enslaved at Montpelier remembered and also honored.
The Mountpelier Descendants Committee is the nation'sfirst independent descendant led organization to be
(01:37):
associated with a major historic site.The creation and focus of the Descendants Committee
was not without controversy. The MuntpelierDescendants Committee and the Multpelier Foundation Board clashed
publicly over representation on the board andhow to best tell the stories of generation
(02:00):
of enslavement. Finally, in Juneof twenty twenty two, the two agreed
there should be parody in terms ofrepresentation of the Mountpelier Board as well as
representation and Mountpelier programs. Until recently, the histories and memories of enslaved people
(02:22):
have been amazingly excluded from reflection,interpretation, even comment at any of the
iconic founding Father's sites, and thequestion of who gets to tell the history
has always been and likely will alwaysbe, rife with tensions. But in
(02:43):
pursuing a better understanding of the enslavedpeople's lives at Mountpelier, it helps us
form a more complete view of historyand grapple with the paradox of liberty,
that which is conshrined in the Constitutionbut denied too many. Thank you James
French for joining us today. Whenone looks back at the history of the
(03:08):
early history of the country, it'ssort of a startling to come to appreciate
to what extent owning having enslaved peoplewas so essential to the net worth,
particularly of these plantation owners such asGeorge Washington, such as Jefferson, and
(03:30):
in the case of Madison, thatit had having enslaved people had more valued
or contributed greatly to the more soto their net worth than owning land.
Is that a fair characterization, Yes, it is. This was an economy
that was based upon slave labor,and so the wealth of colonial Virginia and
(03:54):
throughout the slaveholding South was generated byenslaved Africans and then eventually those who were
born here so they became inslaved Americans. And then much of the wealth in
the North was tied to processing theexports from the South, so you know,
(04:14):
textiles and things of that nature,and trade and the slave trade which
was you know, the triangular trade, which involved a building of great shipping
lines and shipping companies. So theentire economy was was part of the larger
Atlantic economy, which existed essentially toum to uh produce highly profitable crops,
(04:42):
beginning with sugar, you know,and this goes all the way back to
you know, the fifteenth century inCape Verdi in Sautome where the first sugar
plantation was was was um was createdand that that by the Portuguese and then
that migra to Brazil and the Spanishgot involved in all the other European powers
(05:05):
vied for that, and it thenmigrated to the Caribbean, and that that's
when the British got involved in.The British built the wealthiest um plantation economy
in the world at that time onthe tiny little island of Barbados, which
was, you know, the sizeof you know, a little part of
(05:26):
Long Island and UM and and thateventually spread to British North America. So
by the time it came to BritishNorth America, these these these the the
economics and the model of it hadbeen really perfected of taking people from Africa
UM, creating profitable plantations and producingcrops that were then essentially sold to the
(05:53):
North United States and then to EuropeUM. So it was it was centrally
essentially tied to to slave labor.So it was James Madison, I mean
conflicted about this is that your impression, I think we have to be careful
when we asked that question. Thereason is that if you look at the
(06:17):
historical record at the time. Idon't think it was a matter of individual
morality. Of course, people knewit was wrong. It was it was
against precepts of religion. It wasin the historical record that people understood that
slavery was an evil, and itwas understood widely that this was something that
(06:43):
could perhaps spell the doom of theexperiment in democracy and the existence of the
colony and then eventually of the youngnation that was founded the reality. And
James Madison himself, yes, heabsolutely knew that slavery was morally reprehensible,
(07:05):
and there's quite quite a record ofthat. But Madison, like many of
the other planters of that era,compromised with that, and you know,
their their wealth was tied up intoit. And so one of the things
that happened was that explanations were created, justifications, and one of the justifications
(07:30):
was, frankly, that the peoplewho were being enslaved were not fully human
and so um the conventional morality didnot apply to them, and that this
was somehow, this was a benightedpeople who were somehow um uplifted, if
you will, by European civilization orthe Enlightenment, and that on that basis
(07:55):
of kind of this benign view ofslavery as being an institution that in some
how uplifts people. It was justifiedon that basis. But again, that
type of view of justifying of slaverywas born of necessity. What was driving
(08:16):
many of the individual decisions and thenthose social structures behind that decision was the
fact that this was an extremely profitableeconomic structure. Tell me about the Descendants
Committee. The Descendants Committee is aunique organization. It was created in the
(08:37):
summer of twenty nineteen at the JuneteenthGathering of that year, and it was
created by at a gathering of descendantsof known Madison area descendants. About three
hundred people were invited by the MontpelierFoundation and they gathered to they were asked
(09:00):
by Montpelier to consider an institutional relationshipbetween the descendants and the foundation. And
not coincidentally, the year before,a groundbreaking document had been created also at
Mountpelio called the Rubric at Best Practicesof Engaging Descendant Communities. We just call
(09:20):
it the rubric, And the Rubricwas developed by a gathering of about fifty
fifty seven scholars the year before,and they looked at really kind of what
was the current state of the relationshipbetween descendants of the enslaved and the institutions
(09:41):
responsible for managing presidential sites and youknow, in a more broad sense,
managing sites and enslavement. And atthe time that the the what the kind
of the the normal state of affairswas that many of these sites had no
(10:05):
formal relationship with the descendants, andthose that did often had relationships that could
really be described as opportunistic or tokened, meaning that they would be brought in
on a case by case basis incase there's a need for some type of
(10:28):
speaker and event or some fundraising need. What those relationships had in common was
a lack of shared authority, trueauthority and how the site has run.
The rubric essentially is a document thatespouses something that we call that it caused
(10:48):
structural parity, and structural parity essentiallysays, boiling it down, it says
that the best practice between an institutionand the descendant community would be authority equally
shared authority between the institution itself andthe descendant community at every level of the
organization, so from the board levelto senior staff, junior staff, and
(11:13):
even volunteers. And interns that thereshould be shared authority. The reasoning is
that that when you don't have sharedauthority, you really bump into the question
of who has the authority to interprethistory, Whose history is being told,
(11:33):
whose history is being untold, andwhat are the kind of the patterns of
that are there are there historic sustainedexclusions from telling certain parts of the history
of a given site. And theanswer, obviously it was yes. So
in many sites and I won't nameany sites in particular, but I'll just
(11:54):
say that in many sites, slaverywas seen as kind of a um,
you know, an unfortunate consequence ofof of the good history that happened here
quote unquote, and so um,you know, it was an unfortunate part
of history. But you know,look at look at the iconic kind of
(12:18):
world changing documents or or you know, um concepts that emerge from this other
separate history. And of course that'snot a history works. History is not
divided into chambers or into silos.So um, the Descendants Committee wanted to
bring all of the sides of historytogether and have it around a single table.
(12:41):
So um, imagine a boardroom.You know, you have a table
people in a boardroom and those whohave traditionally been at that table are sitting
there and a new group walks in, and that new group has just as
much skin of the game, ifnot more, than the pre existing board
board does. And one view,and this I think was perhaps the prevailing
(13:05):
view for some, was that peoplewho are seated at the board prior to
the new group coming in would bedisempowered. But in fact, what happens
is that, you know, power, like history itself, is not divisible,
you know, in the sense,it's not like a pizza, you
know, cut it up and divideit and pass it out. In fact,
(13:26):
when a new group comes in andsits at a table, that everyone
becomes more powerful because the new group, of course brings the power and the
insights and the perspectives and the historythat they have and they join it together.
So the institution itself, if youyou know, to continue the analogy,
the institution being that table is empoweredby structural parity. So now we
(13:48):
are able to bring new perspectives andnew new resources. So that's what the
that's what the Descendants Committee was formedto do. It took us a while,
of course, um, but um, that was the purpose so the
purpose was to offer a pathway toachieve structural parody UM, to implement the
(14:11):
rubric, and to be the firstinstitution in the country to do so.
That's what we did. How didyou navigate this? It was not an
easy road, UM, and thatwas very unfortunate because we always thought as
an opportunity to bring people together totell richer, more accurate history. UM.
(14:33):
And you know, history has tobe truthful for it to have any
meaning. And UM. Initially that'show we had hoped and expected it would
go. UM. It did notgo that way UM for long. Unfortunately,
some people were UM were threatened byUM an institutional relationship, and so
(14:56):
we had some you know, wewasted some time with trying to get it
back off on the rail. Wedid get it back on the rails,
and in May of twenty twenty two, we needed the what I consider to
be the most prominent and UM qualifiedan exciting board of any museum in the
(15:22):
country. The parody is very mucha Madisonian principle. So by that I
mean that it allows the descendants ofthe enslaved not only to elect themselves to
be on the board, but toelect their representatives. So that's a very
Madisonian kind of democratic principle. Soto be a member of the descendants committee,
(15:43):
do you have to prove that youcan't you know that you had ancestors
who were enslaved. I get,I gather it's not just at Mountpellier but
elsewhere in the neighborhood. And whatit's a broad definition of neighborhood. But
is that So let's let's let's backup and see what what do we mean
by the neighborhood and what do wemean by um by relation. So when
(16:11):
you talk about a plantation, you'retalking about the property that belongs to an
individual at a given period of time. So Madison Montpular today is about twenty
sixty acres. Back then it wasbigger. But Madison himself, um,
you know, bought and soul propertyall over the area. And they weren't
(16:33):
all contiguous pieces of property. Buthis family enslaved people who themselves had relationships
and families that went across the changingboundaries of his personal property. So what's
more important the property boundary or thefamilies. The same thing goes with Madison's
(16:56):
family himself. So Madison there werethree main family's background um at this time
there was a Madison family, theNewman family, the Barber family, and
there were there were several other families, but those were the three largest landhowned
land holding families. All of thosefamilies intermarried over the centuries, and so
(17:17):
did the people that they enslaved.So the rubric does not look at Madison's
property boundaries in any given period intime to be the jeff and the defining
kind of qualifying criteria for who isa descendant who isn't. What the rubric
does is it is it looks atthe ecosystem in which those plantations are,
(17:44):
you know, partake. They're partof an ecosystem. And so by ecosystem
we mean an economy, we meana shared culture, a shared history,
and all of those things go beyondthe the property boundary of any given landowner
for white again, for white familiesand black families. So we know,
(18:07):
for example, that James Madison sistermarried a Newman, the Newman's. The
Newmans brought in enslaved people into thatmarriage, and that some of the owners,
so to speak, of those enslavedpeople, impregnated those the people who
(18:30):
came into that marriage. One ofthose enslaved people. His name is Rachel.
I'm a descendant of Rachel. Rachel'sson was my great great great grandfather,
and I'm sitting in the house thathe built right now as we speak.
You obviously are committed to the notionthat that full history will empower us
(18:53):
and enrich us. How I mean, for example, some of the noted
historians Madison and Early America, howdo they embrace this notion? Not everybody
is comfortable with this full history,and not everybody is comfortable with what a
pivotal role this experience, especially theexperience of slavery, had in defining early
(19:19):
America. That's a hard one toswallow. It is. So the way
that I look at it is thatgoing back to this notion of historically,
who has been allowed to have asay in interpreting history, who sits at
the table? And that's a veryimportant notion, because if people who have
(19:45):
never shared that table with others whohave you know, and I like to
say that the descendants don't just haveskin, you know, skin in the
game, they have bones in theground. If they've never had that experience
with sharing a table of decision makingan authority, then then the criticism of
kind of of orthodoxy I feel isa little bit skewed. It's uninformed,
(20:11):
if you will. What the majorityof historians that I have spoken with fully
understand that there's an ecosystem that Montpelierand other surrounding plantations are part of.
Madison's family did not locate there forthe scenery, which is gorgeous. They
(20:33):
came there because the land itself isextremely fertile, one of the most fertile
soil deposits in the world, frankly, and it was available, and so
that's where they were able to practice. There their fortune of enslaving people planting
(20:56):
crops, having those people plant crops, getting wealthy, building in their political
and social capital, and becoming leadersof the country. That would not be
possible without the people who did thework and created that wealth. Now,
the irony is that the history thatwas produced at Mountpelier is one of the
(21:17):
greatest paradoxes in the world. Sowe have, as we all know,
the Constitution were many of the conceptswere were came to light if you will,
on the second floor of the houseat Mountpelier, and those were deep,
deeply researched, eloquently and carefully constructedof ideas that would guarantee liberty and
(21:47):
freedom. The paradox is that itwas those ideas came into the world because
they were They were enabled, ifyou will, economically and socially by an
economy built upon the opposite of freedomand liberty, which is slavery. So
you have the paradox of freedom andits opposite, slavery, coexisting in the
(22:12):
same space. The majority of thehistorians that I've spoken to are interested in
that paradix. How do you understandand interpret that paradox, and perhaps if
you can do that, you canthen become interested in the identities of the
two hundred and fifty people were buriedon the property and on marked graves in
(22:33):
a forest, and understand what weretheir contributions to not just the wealth of
Madison, but to his culture andhis ideas and to his intellect. What
role did that community play in everythingthat became the legacy of James Madison.
Madison's the Madison's family were essentially forevery Madison, there were twenty eight enslaved
(23:00):
people over the years. What thatmeans to me is that Madison and his
family, and his father and hisfather's father essentially lived in African American communities.
And they were not fealed off fromthe culture, from the from the
intellectual discourse, from certainly not fromthe wealth it was generated. But they
(23:25):
were part of a community. Itwas not an equal community, It was
an oppressive community. It was nota fair community. Um. But ideas
and other other aspects of of ofthat of that community flowed in every direction,
not just one. So I feelthat, you know, the exciting
(23:48):
prospect for historians today, the mostexciting, you know possibility is to really
mind that paradox, to understand thefull and true dimensions of our origin story.
We really deal in something different,fundamentally different than the kind of the
(24:15):
daily back and forth of political debate. What we deal in, and I
was getting a little bit, Iwas getting towards us earlier, what we
deal in this history. And wehave something to offer the nation by enriching
our history with more information. Andwhat that allows Americans to do is to
(24:38):
become more resilient, because if youcan see the deep structural underpinnings of our
history, you can accept the goodalong with the bad, and you can
understand a lot more about how wegot to where we are today, what
(25:00):
we hope to do at Montpelier isto become a place where all Americans,
regardless of political viewpoints, can comeand benefit in some way and engage in
some way that they've never done sobefore with the origin story of our nation.
And that's something that's really really differentthan the debates that are taking place
(25:26):
outside of the museum. There alwayswill be a partisan kind of back and
forth in this country, but therethe space for a museum. Its ability
to add to American discourse, Ilike to feel is on a higher level
(25:48):
than whatever winds are blowing across thepolitical landscape because what we can do like
no other institution is we can digin the ground. Literally. We have
a world class archaeology department, andwe did in the ground, and the
public can come and do this.We have archaeology expeditions all the time and
(26:10):
then come out and they can,you know, put a put a shovel
in the ground and pick something upand they always will find something and they're
they're the next person to have touchedthis artifact until it was lost sometime in
the seventeen hundreds. And the historyitself is undeniable. It's sitting there right
(26:32):
in your hand, and when youtouch something so tangible as an artifact of
history, it's only human nature toask where did it come from, what
role did it play, why isit there? And what does it mean?
And that's a really powerful experience.So if you can ground truth history,
(26:53):
you can interpret it and you canmake you know, you can reconcile
yourselves to its existence. And that'swhat we want Multila to do. How
do you think Madison would think aboutthings as they are today? Madison on
his deathbed, he was concerned aboutthe unity of the country, and he
(27:15):
was not in any way naive.He knew what the weaknesses of the country
were. He said that we facedbasically two crisis. One was the crisis
of slavery, and the other wasa crisis of staying united as a single
country. Now in his time,he did not resolve the issue of slavery.
He left that for future generations andwe're still reconciling ourselves with the repercussions
(27:41):
of that today. But I thinkthat for that second objective that he had,
the second one that he felt was, you know, our charge as
Americans. I feel that the legacythat he left behind literally in the ground,
compliments his record in a way thatwe can understand our origins and come
(28:04):
together and reconcile ourselves with it andbe a stronger people as a result.
For our final episode on James Madison, James French joins Michael Steel and me
at Montpellier for a live event withdoctor Hassan Jefferies, Doctor Tyson Reader,
(28:30):
and doctor Holly Schulman. Be certainto tune in for our discussion unpacking the
complex truth behind the legacy and wheredo we go from here. Thank you
for joining us as we explore thelegacy of the three founding fathers who brought
the capital to the banks of thePotomac. Stay tuned as we dive into
(28:52):
the lives of Thomas Jefferson as welland then George Washington. This episode was
edited by Baywulf Rockland, Roosevelt Heineand Lisa Shudy of Two Squared Media Productions.
Special thanks to Isabel Dorville for herresearch and production support, Folk Diversity
(29:18):
for ensuring purposeful conversations when reflecting onour complex history and basking strategies for engaging
our stakeholder community. Thanks as wellto Joy Ford, Austin, Jody Simuda,
and Amy Anthony at the Institute ofPolitics, Policy and History. We
(29:41):
are grateful to the Kellogg Foundation fortheir generous support of this founding father's Legacy
series. Be sure to subscribe whereveryou listen to podcasts.
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