The Mellon Foundation has awarded $5.8 million to Montpelier, the Virginia estate of President James Madison, to tell the history of its enslaved community.
“As the first American institution to have achieved equal co-stewardship with the descendants of the enslaved, our work is the full expression of the Madisonian principle of equal representation for all,” James French, a founder of the descendants committee and now chairman of the foundation board, said in a prepared statement.
About 300 enslaved people are buried at the 2,650-acre site. Historians will gather as much information as possible about those individuals, French said, and archaeologists will begin surveying the boundaries of the burial site in April. Planning for the memorial itself will probably begin toward the end of the year, he said.
The grant is part of the Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a $250 million program to better commemorate the contributions to American history of populations that have often been marginalized or overlooked. Late last year, Mellon awarded $11 million to the city of Richmond to help create a memorial center in the Shockoe Bottom district that before the Civil War housed the nation’s second-busiest slave market.“It’s a very exciting time,” French said.
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