A dispute between the Montpelier Foundation board and the Montpelier Descendants Committee over a power-sharing agreement reached last summer has now snowballed into what appears to be a full-on revolt by staff at the fourth U.S. president’s historic estate.
“By revoking parity with the MDC and by firing and suspending staff, TMF has attempted to co-opt the meaning of this ancestral space, and in the process has done irreparable harm to the security of and accessibility to these culturally significant resources,” reads a statement released Saturday, April 23, on a new website, montpelierstaff.com, and signed by “a majority of full-time staff and a growing number of part-time staff.”
The controversy erupted in late March when the Montpelier Foundation board voted to reverse its June 2021 decision to rewrite the bylaws granting the MDC the right to recommend at least half the members of the board. The stated goal was to create “structural parity” by giving descendants of the enslaved workers who built and ran Montpelier equal say in determining the future of the site.
The reversal prompted immediate backlash from the MDC, Montpelier staff, and historic preservation groups including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier and leases it to the foundation.
Foundation Board Chair Gene Hickok insisted the board would still create structural parity by appointing descendants itself; he blamed the situation on the MDC for refusing to recognize two descendants put forth by the board as contributing to structural parity.
“That’s not partnership. It’s not collegiality. And that’s not what the original understanding of our relationship would be,” he said in an interview earlier this month. Neither Hickok nor Montpelier CEO Roy Young responded to a request for comment for this article.
The situation further deteriorated last week when Young fired multiple high-level staff members including Executive Vice President and Chief Curator Elizabeth Chew and Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration Matt Reeves.
According to the statement from remaining Montpelier staff, those firings came in retaliation for public statements in support of the MDC and have created a “culture of fear” for those staff members who remain.
Hickok initially released a statement defending the board’s actions and placing the blame on MDC. After last week’s firings, the foundation board released a new statement with an offered compromise. MDC could put forth a list of 15 people from which nine would be chosen to serve on the board. Half would begin serving July 1 and the other half would be installed on October 1.
MDC attorney Greg Werkheiser said that was a move in the right direction, but he said the delay in installing some of the MDC-recommended board members was a deal-breaker.
“The reason they would do that is because by splitting up these new board members, they maintain their two-thirds majority,” Werkheiser says. “And in those four months, they will not rehire the fired staff. They will fire additional staff. They will take actions against the current serving MDC board members, and they have the power with a two-thirds majority to actually expand the board and dilute any new MDC members they put on.”