A Bit Of Railroad Photography And A Reminder Of Past Shameful History (Off Topic)

The old railroad station in Montpelier, Virginia.  Now a post office and museum. (click to enlarge)

I firmly believe that the human race is full of genetic errors.  Why else, for multiple millennia,  would we continually engage in war, theft, greed, gluttony, revenge and discrimination based upon nothing more than learned bias among other shameful behaviors?  Why would the majority continue to oppress the minority—all over the world?

These behaviors go back as far as the archeologists and anthropologists have discovered and interpreted ancient civilizations.  Why do you think Hammurabi needed to create his Code in 1750-55 B.C.?  The Code sets out 'laws' to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, among other unacceptable behaviors.  The errant behaviors continue today.  We never seem to learn our lessons and we, as a race, never seem to change.  I have to believe this is because something is wrong with our genetic makeup.  But this just my way of thinking and what I have learned in my lifetime.

This redbud tree is a nice complement to the greens of the grass, blues of the sky and yellow of
the depot. (click to enlarge)

In this blog post I wanted to highlight a reminder of how we treated each other not so long ago, within many of our lifetimes.  Opposite of that past, I post some pleasant photos of a former railroad depot which is now a U.S. Post Office and museum in Montpelier, Virginia.  I found my entire experience here  interesting.

Here are a couple of paragraphs about the history of this station from Wikipedia.  I made a couple of minor edits, not to the content, but mainly removing a number of other links.

The Montpelier estate, which includes this railroad depot, was the home of President James Madison. The entire estate is quite impressive. William du Pont purchased the estate in 1901 and paid to have a train depot built there to bring in supplies and for his weekly travel to Wilmington, Delaware for business. The station was designed by the Southern Railway Company using one of its standard floor plans, which called for segregated waiting rooms. The "White" waiting room measured 14 feet wide by 15.6 feet long. The "Colored" waiting room measured 9 feet long by 15.6 feet wide. Signs for "Colored" and "White" were installed over each door and remain there today. Both waiting rooms were served by a single ticket office, which had two windows that intersected both rooms at an angle.

Freight service began in 1911 and ceased in 1962. Passenger service began in 1912 and cased in 1929, after which time the time postal area on the first floor was enlarged.

Following the death of Marion du Pont Scott in 1983, the Montpelier Estate was passed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 2008, the Montpelier Foundation undertook a renovation of the Depot, restoring it to its original 1910s appearance in order to document this period of legalized segregation in Virginia and educate the public about the "Jim Crow" era. On February 21, 2010, the restored Depot reopened with a new exhibition inside, "The Montpelier Train Depot: In the Time of Segregation."

I grew up on the 1950s and 1960s in a small town in western Pennsylvania, during the height of discrimination and the Civil Rights movement.  I was largely unaware of all of it, remarkably.  Why?  All of my friends and acquaintances, black or white, were just friends.  I never saw them as any different other than some having darker skin.  Everybody was just everybody.  I never heard my parents or friends ever talk about others in a derogatory manner nor was their any noticeable discrimination at school or at stores to the best of my knowledge.  Everybody was just everybody.  I'm positive there was some discriminatory things going on but nothing blatant nor was I aware of anything overt.  I can say the same about my college experience.  We were all a bunch of young adults that were occupied with the debate of the efficacy of the war in Vietnam more than anything else.  

It was only after I moved to Virginia as an adult did I become aware that discrimination was rampant and learned how some people treated others.  I never accepted any of that.  Luckily, after I 'accidentally' became a police officer, I befriended a Black lieutenant who grew up outside of Memphis, Tennessee.  He 'schooled' me on what racism as all about as he was about 10 years older than me.  He became one of my mentors and one of the four most important men in my life.  

This train depot brought back a lot of the memories I had spending hours and hours with him, as friend and mentee.  As I started out with this blog, I'll end my narrative with my opinion that there must be some basic flaw in human beings.  We should never try to erase nor mitigate our past mistakes.  We should learn from them.  When will we get the message?

(click to enlarge)

If you enlarge this photo, you can see captioned above the waiting room doors, who was 'permitted'
to enter.  (click to enlarge)

This was the "Colored" waiting room.  Much smaller than the
"White" waiting room.  (click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Stationmaster's office. (click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

I could have just posted some really nice images of this train depot and be done with it.  But that would have been an injustice to what this depot and its display now represents.  So, now you have it—the nice and not so nice.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

All content on this blog is © 2013-2024 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.