A lesson on Jim Crow laws

A place of segregation during Jim Crow, the newly restored Montpelier train depot now hosts an African-American history exhibit.

James Madison’s Montpelier and the Orange County African-American Historical Society present an opening ceremony in the freshly painted station Sunday at 2 p.m.

Emmy Award-winning journalist Juan Williams hosts the festivities, which are open to the public.

Built in 1910 by William DuPont, the depot on Route 20 — four miles south of the town of Orange — doubled as a post office two years later.

It served as a train station until 1974, and during the years of government-mandated racial separation, the depot had separate waiting rooms for “colored” and “white.” Those waiting rooms were maintained as part of Montpelier’s one-year restoration of the 100-year-old building.

“The Montpelier Train Depot is one of the many venues at Montpelier that tells the complicated story of race relations in America in the historic places where these events occurred,” said Michael Quinn, president of the Montpelier Foundation.

The depot exhibit aims to teach the public about Jim Crow in a space where it actually happened.

The separate waiting rooms “show the stark reality of racism that African-American travelers confronted during this period, and lets visitors examine first-hand the fallacy of the notion of ‘separate but equal,’” according to a release from the Montpelier Foundation.

The new exhibit also includes displays on African-American life in Orange County and the country and the history of the train station.

Other African-American history sites at Montpelier include Mount Pleasant, where the first enslaved individuals settled the plantation; the South Yard and Madison mansion, where domestic slaves lived and worked; the farm complex, where agricultural slaves lived and worked in the tobacco and wheat fields; a slave cemetery and the Gilmore Cabin, built 1873 by George Gilmore, a freedman born a slave on Montpelier in 1810.

“These spaces at Montpelier display a sweep of American history that can serve to educate the public about the realities of our common past, but also about America’s ability to change for the better,” Quinn said.

James Madison, fourth president, was a slave owner when he was inaugurated in 1809. Montpelier was his lifelong home.

After Sunday’s public presentation in the train station, Montpelier will host lectures on the history of the train station and civil rights and a reception in Lewis Hall. The lecture and reception fee is $30.