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On Thursday, the National Park Service dismantled and removed exhibits related to slavery at the President’s House site at Independence Hall. Earlier today, a group of about 20 Philadelphia residents visited the site to protest the removal of a piece of history.
“It’s a line that has been crossed,” said Jim Nicholson, of Media. “Slavery is part of our national history, horrific to begin with, but we need to be open and aware of our history and not cover it up. This is an attempt to do just that. And I’m here to witness this.”
Zaire Woods, a 17-year-old Philadelphia high school student, called the incident “messed up.”
“It’s taken away the opportunity for other people to learn about the history and stuff that did happen,” he said. “And it’s been here for so long, so why take it down now?”
“I feel like they’re just taking away our history,” added Nicholas Aappiahene, who is also 17. “It’s not a good act or a good move right now.”
Nearby, flyers of various colors that read “History is real” and “Learn all history” hang from where one of the removed exhibit panels used to be.
The six-panel outdoor exhibit, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” opened in 2010 after years of community advocacy. The panels examine the paradox between the fight for freedom against British rule and the fact that the movement’s leaders engaged in slavery during the founding of the nation. It explores the lives of the nine people Washington enslaved while living in Philadelphia in addition to more than 300 others held at his Mt. Vernon home in Virginia.
The exhibit was the result of years of campaigning by the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, which organized to establish a prominent memorial to the people held in slavery by Washington in Philadelphia as the President’s House project began to take shape.
Roz McPherson, who served as project director during the development of the site, said she learned that the exhibit was being removed “as the site was being dismantled” Thursday afternoon.
“It’s very upsetting because of all of the folks who have worked so hard for so many years on this,” she told WHYY News. “But it was not a surprise, quite frankly.
Handwritten signs reading “learn all history” have been attached at the President’s House exhibit in Old City Friday afternoon. (Mark Eichmann/WHYY)
Where are the panels?
McPherson expressed an interest in retrieving the panels, which are currently in the park service’s possession. She pointed out that the exhibit was not funded or created by the park service or the federal government, but rather by the city and local foundations.
“We raised the funds to create this interpretive exhibit and then when we discovered the archaeology,” she said. “There were both private and public entities that contributed to financing that site. The Park Service did not put up funding. This was a site that they had never intended to acknowledge. When it was completed, the city handed it over to the park service because it is their land.
She added that they now hoped to “figure out some of the intricacies of that entire relationship,” which hadn’t been understood in detail before because “nobody expected to have to go through this.”
