A Virginia post office has closed its doors over unease that it was located inside a historic train depot which doubles as a museum about racial segregation.
The main concern was that the museum near former president James Madison’s Montpelier estate displayed historical signage above two of its outer doors. One labeled “White” and the adjacent door labeled “Colored.”
“Service at Montpelier Station was suspended after it was determined the display at the site was unacceptable to the Postal Service,” said USPS spokesman Philip Bogenberger in an official statement.
The statement adds that the “Postal Service management considered that some customers may associate the racially-based, segregated entrances with the current operations of the Post Office and thereby draw negative associations between those operation and the painful legacy of discrimination and segregation.”
The post office had just one employee and operated four hours a day. It served about 100 people, according to the Culpeper Star-Exponent.
Speaking to The Richmond Dispatch-Times, James French, a descendant of the enslaved at the Montpelier who now chairs The Montpelier Foundation, questioned the timing of the closure.
“It’s been 12 years, right?…widely acclaimed,” he told the outlet. “And never once has there been any negative public comment. And this post office has been in that building a hundred years. So what has changed? A couple of weeks later, suddenly our exhibit was beyond the pale. Without any change whatsoever,” French said. “They waited for when Black people had real authority in terms of interpreting our common history to make this complaint.”
USPS has no plans to find a more suitable venue for the now-shuttered postal office.
