Justice Prevails: Descendants of enslaved people at historic plantation win bruising battle to tell their stories

Share

Explore Our Galleries

A man stands in front of the Djingareyber mosque on February 4, 2016 in Timbuktu, central Mali. 
Mali's fabled city of Timbuktu on February 4 celebrated the recovery of its historic mausoleums, destroyed during an Islamist takeover of northern Mali in 2012 and rebuilt thanks to UN cultural agency UNESCO.
TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY SEBASTIEN RIEUSSEC / AFP / SÉBASTIEN RIEUSSEC
African Peoples Before Captivity
Shackles from Slave Ship Henrietta Marie
Kidnapped: The Middle Passage
Image of the first black members of Congress
Reconstruction: A Brief Glimpse of Freedom
The Lynching of Laura Nelson_May_1911 200x200
One Hundred Years of Jim Crow
Civil Rights protest in Alabama
I Am Somebody! The Struggle for Justice
Black Lives Matter movement
NOW: Free At Last?
#15-Beitler photo best TF reduced size
Memorial to the Victims of Lynching
hands raised black background
The Freedom-Lovers’ Roll Call Wall
Frozen custard in Milwaukee's Bronzeville
Special Exhibits

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Ways to Support ABHM?

By Rhonda Sonnenberg, Southern Poverty Law Center

James Madison’s Montpelier mansion was once a plantation reliant on slave labor. (Jennifer GlassCC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Set on a pastoral landscape at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains outside Orange, Virginia, Montpelier is among the country’s premier historic plantation sites.

It was the home of James Madison, the so-called father of the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s fourth president.

It was also “home” to 300 enslaved people during Madison’s time, and their descendants are now boldly asserting the right to tell their stories.

For the past 18 months, Montpelier’s conservative, white leaders had been battling the Montpelier Descendants Committee (MDC) – an organization dedicated to restoring the narratives of enslaved African Americans on the plantation – over its demand for equal voting power on Montpelier’s board…

But in a stunning turn of events this week, MDC representatives took the majority of the Montpelier Foundation board seats for the first time.

Continue reading about this historic shift in power and what it could mean for the MDC.

Montpelier was just one part of the slavery machine that erased peoples’ roots and afforded white people generations of privilege.

People and organizations demanding recognition of slavery’s impact will continue to make breaking news.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.

Leave a Comment