VOA标准英语2010年-Segregationist Signs Reappear at a Pre

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One hundred years ago, a Delaware chemical tycoon¹, William duPont, ordered a train depot² built at Montpelier, which was once the Virginia estate of America's fourth president, James Madison.  DuPont owned Montpelier at the time.

The station was needed for trains that brought in supplies, rural farm workers, and the duPont family's fancy private coaches.

John Strader, The Montpelier Foundation

The station's ticket agent sat in a room that faced both black and white waiting areas. Patrons could see into each room, but African-American patrons could not venture beyond their own area.

Like other southern states, Virginia was a place where blacks and whites lived together but very much apart.

Racist³ laws required African Americans to drink from separate public drinking fountains, climb back stairs to sit in the balconies of theaters, and wait in much smaller rooms at bus and train stations.

So William duPont built his depot from a standard Southern Railway floor plan that specified⁴ one entrance marked "White" and another marked "Colored."

The Montpelier Foundation

On the floor plan for the Montpelier Station, you will note significant differences in the sizes of the White and Colored waiting rooms.

Passenger trains have not run to Montpelier for 40 years, and the depot closed in 1974. Its freight room stayed open as the estate's post office. 

Montpelier is now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation⁵. It set up a foundation that has been renovating⁶ buildings throughout the estate. And when it got around to the train station, it made a controversial call.

The restored depot would look just like it had in 1910 - with its "White" and "Colored" entrances. 

This was highly unusual, since most places in the South have tried to paint over or tear down remnants of their segregationist⁷ past.  Black leaders who opposed the move said the station would be, as Washington Post reporter Philip Kennicott put it, one of the toxic⁸ byproducts of oppression.

Photo by Kenneth M. Wyner, courtesy of The Montpelier Foundation

This is the manse on the Montpelier property, built and owned by President James Madison, the principal author of the U.S. Constitution. Like its little train depot, it has been faithfully restored.

But other African Americans, including journalist Juan Williams, who spoke⁹ at the dedication¹⁰, supported re-marking the "White" and "Colored" entrances.

"This is a place of healing," he told the audience at the dedication. "This is a place that can . . . help us understand what took place here."