Jefferson and Madison Homes Seized by ‘Woke’ Detractors of the Founding Fathers

T homas Jefferson has become the Rodney Dangerfield of the Founding Fathers: He gets no respect, not even at his Monticello home near Charlottesville, Va.

Recent visitors say the mansion, which has adorned the U.S. nickel coin since 1938, has become a center of radically revisionist history. “The whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation,” Jeffrey Tucker, a recent visitor from the libertarian Brownstone Institute, told the New York Post.

“The tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man,” writes Stephen Owen, another visitor, on Facebook.

The victimization motif is everywhere at Monticello. The visitor center features a new painting of Jefferson’s weeping slaves. There is an “audiovisual immersive experience” on Sally Hemings, a slave who allegedly had a long affair with Jefferson. Guides begin their outdoor tours of Monticello’s gardens and grounds by discussing the injustices visited upon Native Americans who once lived there.

The changes are all because the Thomas Jefferson Foundation is now run by Democratic donors and former government appointees. Left-leaning philanthropist David Rubenstein, a Carter-administration official, donated $20 million to restore “the landscape of slavery” at Monticello. This validates O’Sullivan’s Law, named after former National Review editor John O’Sullivan: “All organizations that are not explicitly conservative will over time become left-wing.”

George Allen, a former Virginia GOP governor, says it’s time to take back Monticello and reverse “the politicization of a beautiful historic property.”

I wish him luck. Because in May the “woke” movement scored another victory in its attempt to seize control of the Founding Father narrative — again aided by a multi-million-dollar grant from David Rubenstein.

Rubenstein’s $10 million gift went to Montpelier, James Madison’s refurbished home in rural Virginia. Madison, of course, wrote the Bill of Rights, much of the Constitution, and a large chunk of the Federalist Papers. In addition, he created the three-branch division of powers that still guides our federal government and served two terms as president.

But the Rubenstein millions haven’t gone to the upkeep of his home or the celebration of Madison’s life. They’ve gone toward a radical reshaping of the story of Montpelier along the lines of the infamous 1619 Project, which puts slavery and racism at the center of all parts of America’s story.

In May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the home, forced the Montpelier Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the home, to accept a slate of left-wing activist members in the name of racial equity. The new board members mean that the Foundation will now share governing powers with the Montpelier Descendants Committee (MDC), a group of activists only some of whom are descended from the slaves who lived at Montpelier during Madison’s time.

The MDC’s entire connection to Montpelier is tenuous. Montpelier defines a “descendent community” very broadly. It can include not only those whose ancestors were enslaved but also “those who feel connected to the work the institution is doing, whether or not they know of a genealogical connection.”

Indeed, of the 20 candidates the MDC nominated for the board, only two indicated that they have a lineage traceable to Montpelier. Of those finally selected, the most prominent are former left-wing CNN journalist Soledad O’Brien and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, noted that the SPLC has a record of unfairly smearing as racist any groups with which it disagrees, and it has “a long-standing commitment to pushing a radical racial history curriculum in the schools.”

“We, too, are the co-founders of this nation, and we would like that to be told,” James French, the chair of the MDC, told CBS19 News in Orange County, Va. But the story that French and his allies want to tell is a jarring reinterpretation of American history. Expensive new exhibits hammer home the message that draw a direct connection between Madison’s slaves and current events such as the George Floyd killing and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The worst part were the gross historical inaccuracies and constant bias exhibited by the tour guide,” complained AlexZ on Facebook, who visited July 8 and took the pricey $35 tour. Mike Lapolla, another visitor from Oklahoma, complained: “A one hour Critical Race Theory experience disguised as a tour.”

The New York Post summarized its opinion of the skewed view that’s now presented:

Visitors to Montpelier get to see just three rooms in the sprawling mansion. The estate “made Madison the philosopher, farmer, statesman, and enslaver that he was,” the guide said as the Post’s group entered the home — a line she repeated at the end of her spiel.

Outdoors and in the house’s huge basement, dozens of interactive stations seek to draw a direct line between slavery, the Constitution, and the problems of African Americans today.

Hurricane Katrina flooding, the Ferguson riots, incarceration, and more all trace back to slavery, according to a 10-minute multi-screen video.

Another exhibit damns every one of the nation’s first 18 presidents — even those, like John Adams and Abraham Lincoln, who never owned slaves — for having benefited from slavery in some way.

The only in-depth material about the Constitution itself appears in a display that pushes the claim, championed by the controversial 1619 Project, that racism was the driving force behind the entire American political system.

Some descendants of the slaves who lived on Madison’s property don’t agree with the capture of Montpelier by the MDC.

Mary Alexander, a descendant of Madison’s valet and the author of a book about his time serving Madison, thinks the MDC should be disbanded. The Post reported her as saying that Montpelier is now “a black history and black rights organization that couldn’t care less about James Madison and his legacy.”

Acknowledging that slavery was “an unjust and horrible system,” she nonetheless said that Montpelier has a unique mission. “There were hundreds of thousands of slaveowners but not hundreds of thousands who wrote the Constitution,” she told the Orange County Review.

Sadly, it appears that Alexander has lost her battle for now. Jefferson’s Monticello has gone “woke.” Madison’s Montpelier has gone “woke.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon may be next.