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President Donald Trump’s administration has installed its own version of history at the President’s House, swapping storied panels on the brutality of slavery at the site for displays that experts say sanitize George Washington’s role as an enslaver.
The replacement caps a monthslong legal battle that was the first direct skirmish between Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and the Trump administration, over the site on Independence Mall.
The change happened overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, hours after the city hosted MLB All-Star game events near the site, allowing the government to switch out the displays and shut down the television screens without public scrutiny.
Roughly a week prior to the changes, park employees installed security cameras near the site, which one worker explained as being for the All-Star game festivities. The cameras were still present Wednesday.
The overhaul of the President’s House exhibit, which was established to memorialize the nine people Washington enslaved at his Philadelphia residence, comes a little more than a week after the city celebrated the United States’ 250th birthday and tourists from around the world saw an incomplete version as the exhibit hung in limbo.
On July 3, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit gave the Trump administration the final go-ahead to replace the panels.
In a statement, Parker said the city intended to seek a rehearing on “serious legal issues” presented in the Third Circuit’s decision and slammed the federal government for installing the panels ”under the cover of darkness.”
“It was allowed to do this by the decision of the federal court, but that it did so at night shows it understands this action is shameful, that it violates community trust,” Parker said.
The site now features the 11 panels were proposed by the Trump administration in April, in addition to more than a dozen smaller panels that detail governmental processes, the lives of various historical figures, and a panel dedicated to the escape of Ona Judge and Hercules, two people enslaved by Washington who fled to freedom.
Though the panels do mention slavery and the people Washington enslaved, the new exhibits mostly offer a broad timeline of U.S. history that significantly strays from the original intent of the President’s House as outlined in the park’s foundation document in 2017: “It would explore the historic context of the site in the context of its ties to slavery and the lives of the enslaved who lived at the site.”
The new panels also soften Washington’s role as an enslaver.
For instance, one display says: “Caught between his private doubts about slavery and his public responsibilities as president, George Washington navigated a nation deeply divided over slavery.”
“Privately, George Washington often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished,” the panel continued. “Yet as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.”
Later in that panel, the Trump administration writes: “Slaves living in the President’s House experienced a greater modicum of autonomy than elsewhere in the South such as to explore the city and sometimes even attend the theater, with Washington buying the tickets.”
Another panel called “Enslaved People at the President’s House,” discusses the lives of each of the nine individuals enslaved by Washington, but reframes Washington’s role.
“President Washington knew and trusted his enslaved house staff enough to buy them tickets for the circus and theater and to let them venture out into the city’s markets on their own,” the panel says.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department said in a statement that the “new panels are full of historical context and highlight the momentous events that took place in the President’s House and other sites at Independence National Historical Park.”
The spokesperson said that the panels “acknowledge the evils of slavery, including its injustice and hypocrisies” and properly tells the story of the nine individuals enslaved by Washington and the “full story” of U.S. history.
Michael Coard, leader of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, a group that has fought to protect the President’s House, said stakeholders were “not surprised, we saw it coming” and were reviewing all possible legal avenues and advocacy options.
Shortly after noon, Coard and other activists spoke defiantly at the site.
He called the new panels “a complete whitewashing of American history” and said the few references to existence of slavery are a reminder that “the best lie is one that has a little bit of truth.”
The drastic alterations are a culmination of about a year of turmoil since the Trump administration began scrutinizing the site as part of the president’s executive order to review or remove content at national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
In January, the administration abruptly removed of all the exhibits at the President’s House, provoking a legal battle waged by the City of Philadelphia and non-stop advocacy from stakeholders who helped develop the site in the early 2000s.
Removals also happened at national parks around the country.
Sheri Utain, 77, has been coming to the President’s House site since January to read aloud the content of the missing panels. When she arrived Wednesday, she was shocked to learn the exhibit had been replaced overnight.
“How sneaky is that?” Utain said. “What kind of government is that?”
Others also continued with their routines, but the response from National Park Service rangers was harsher.
Sandra Shachar has been posting articles on the President’s House walls almost every day since January to provide visitors updates on the court battles over the slavery exhibit.
But Wednesday, the local psychologist was cited for vandalism and ordered to pay a $305 fine.
“It was something I could do … it feels better than doing nothing,” Shachar said holding back tears. “Part of free speech and our First Amendment rights is to put up signs. It’s not defacing. It’s not vandalizing.”
An Interior Department spokesperson said “any vandalism, tampering, destroying or defacing of cultural or archeological resources is a federal crime.”
The installation of the new exhibit marks the end of a phase in the city’s legal battle against Trump’s administration.
The city sued in January when the slavery exhibit was abruptly dismantled, asking a judge to issue an injunction ordering the panels be restored. Judge Cynthia M. Rufe issued a blistering opinion on Presidents Day ordering the restoration, comparing the Trump administration’s action to the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984 novel.
The administration installed roughly half of the removed panels before Rufe’s deadline, but left the site’s walls half bare after appealing to the Third Circuit and securing an administrative stay.
A unanimous Third Circuit three-judge panel — which included Trump, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama appointees — held in June that the city had no rights over the exhibit after having donated the President’s House to the National Park Service.
No changes followed on the ground immediately after the ruling because of litigation in federal court in Boston that challenged the legality of display removals in national parks and historic sites nationwide, leading a district judge to order the Trump administration to restore all removed items.
But on July 2, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stayed that order, clearing any legal obstacles preventing the federal government from installing the new panels.
In the aftermath of the 250th anniversary celebrations, Parker said examining the paradoxes of liberty and slavery that existed during the founding of the United States were key.
“This paradox reveals core questions we still live and struggle with today — how do we share power for the betterment of all people? That is a hard question, and one that President’s House forced us all to consider,” Parker said.
As activists and the city vow to continue the legal fight, the efforts to educate visitors about the history of the President’s House will also continue.
Mijuel Johnson, a guide with The Black Journey: African-American Walking Tour of Philadelphia, will lead a tour of the site Thursday.
“Regardless to what it says on the walls,” Johnsons said, “the whole truth is still going to be told.
