In 2020, public historians and preservationists were all atwitter after the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced the Monuments Project: a five-year, $250 million effort to create more honest commemorative landscapes in the United States. The foundation’s namesake, Andrew W. Mellon (1855-1937), was an early member of a Pittsburgh industrial and financial family whose ranks include bankers, lawyers, judges, and politicians. Andrew’s resume includes banking; distilling; and stints as the U.S Secretary of the Treasury and Ambassador to the U.K.
The Mellons and the institutions associated with them have long been hailed as cornerstones in American history. Yet, how well do the Mellons fare when their ties to slavery, segregation, and white supremacy are examined? In 2019, Inside Philanthropy explored this question in a blog post by Julie Travers:
For example, a recent $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the College of William and Mary is one example of how a funder can approach the legacy of slavery within the humanities. It will support research and education pertaining to the college’s history with enslaved people. During my research for this article, I discovered that several Mellon family ancestors enslaved people, which raises interesting questions about how a foundation can approach this issue in its own history.
The foundation declined the blog post author’s request for comment. The philanthropy article includes some solid research, but I question why it arbitrarily limited its examination of the Mellons to slavery. What about the family’s roles in American society after the Civil War? There’s a whole lot of territory left unexplored, including mortgage lending discrimination and other structural racism reinforcing discriminatory practices that the family’s financial interests promoted.
The Mellons are American heroes. That evidence is abundantly clear in their hometown, Pittsburgh, where the commemorative landscape is filled with monuments to them: place names, a park, public art, buildings, and even a university.
In these days of truth and reconciliation, can the Andrew Mellon Foundation accomplish its goals to reshape the American commemorative landscape and “recalibrate” narratives about our shared national past without first taking ownership, telling the truth, about its namesakes? I don’t think so and one episode from the family’s history underscores why.
Andrew inherited his wealth and status from his father, Thomas Mellon (1813-1908). Thomas Mellon began his career practicing law in Pittsburgh in the 1830s. In 1859. Allegheny County residents elected Thomas Mellon as a judge in the county’s Court of Common Pleas. He served for a decade before retiring in 1869.
Shortly before Mellon left the bench, he participated in a case involving the application of an attorney who wanted to join the Allegheny County Bar to practice law in the city. George B. Vashon (1824-1878) was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His father, John Vashon, had served in the War of 1812 and became a wealthy Pittsburgh entrepreneur and nationally prominent abolitionist.
Advertisement for John Vashon’s business, Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, June 26, 1832.