May 16, 2013
Dear Monticello Community,
Our inaugural Gathering in 2007 was the culmination of a lot of effort and several years of planning. Since that time, we have endeavored to build on that original Gathering. To that end, we were granted 501c7 status from the IRS last September. While this is a good thing, it also took the IRS 1½ years to grant that status putting us significantly behind in our efforts to build the Monticello Community. It had originally been our plan to have gatherings every other year on the odd years. Due to a variety of factors, not least of which has been the Great Recession, this has not been possible. Last Fall, having just been granted 501c7 status, we set about to see if we could hold Gathering II in 2013.
Despite a lot of effort from the committee and from the Monticello Foundation, we have decided that we cannot pull this off this year at a level we are comfortable with. To be honest, every detail had to fall in place at just the right time given the time constraints we had. Perhaps that was a bit much to expect, but we gave it a go anyway.
Therefore, we’ve decided to reschedule this year's Gathering to July 18-20, 2014. We will once again base at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville as we did in 2007. We will also have a Saturday evening reception at Monticello and a Sunday morning sunrise type service at the slave graveyard. As Monticello has just received a large grant to refurbish the house and grounds, any other activities at the house will depend on their schedule, yet to be determined.
The Future
As we legally organized The Monticello Community and sought IRS tax exempt status, we developed the following vision and purpose statements:
Vision
The Monticello Community pursues a fully inclusive realization of Thomas Jefferson’s aspirations for equality among all people and the equitable opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness. We envision a time when everyone with a connection to Monticello’s original community will feel equally welcome, will be inspired by their historic legacy, and will have a deeper and more nuanced perspective on that community and its members. The Monticello Community will serve as a model of how descendants of a southern U.S. plantation community can find healing and reconciliation for the legacies of enslavement, discrimination, and socio-economic inequity.
Purpose
To promote and sustain the social and intellectual connections among the descendants of the community of people associated with the historic Monticello plantation, formerly owned by Thomas Jefferson, as well as other individuals with links to Monticello based on oral history, scholarship, preservation, literature, and other interests.
To develop ways for this particular highly visible historic community to explore and share with other families and communities insights and approaches to finding reconciliation across racial lines.
We feel a strong need to build our Community. To that end, we want to announce the following plans and projects:
Online Web Conference - Saturday, July 13, 2013
Get up to date on what the Monticello Community is doing by logging into this web conference / business meeting. Learn about the Board of Advisors, our By Laws and how we intend to go forward building the Monticello Community. Details to be shared in upcoming announcements.
Replacement of Yahoo Group
We need to move on to a different technology. We hope to have a moderated forum running in the next couple of weeks. This will have the advantage of threads being saved and searchable.
Update of Website
The current website is the product of 1990s technology. However, it is 2013 so we will upgrade shortly.
The point of these initiatives is to create and maintain connections among the Monticello Community. Will you join us?
With best wishes,
David Works
President
The Monticello Community