On Thursday (Jan. 22), a collection of informational indicators spotlighting Black historical past was faraway from the President’s Home in Previous Metropolis, Philadelphia, following President Donald Trump’s directive. Operated by the Nationwide Park Service, crew members had been seen eradicating panels, together with one which detailed the slave commerce and slave financial system from the historic website’s outside exhibit entitled “Freedom and Slavery within the Making of a New Nation,” which honored individuals enslaved by George Washington on the home the place the primary president as soon as lived. The “Life Beneath Slavery” and “The Soiled Enterprise of Slavery” had been additionally among the many many Black historic displays taken down.
“It’s a shame, and that’s an understatement,” Michael Coard, chief of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, advised the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I can not say what I’m considering, as a result of as a prison protection lawyer, I do know higher. What’s happening now could be completely extraordinary within the historical past of the US of America.”
This comes months after President Donald Trump signed an govt order particularly calling out the “improper ideology” at Philadelphia’s Independence Nationwide Historic Park, which incorporates the President’s Home amongst different landmarks and the Nationwide Smithsonian museums. The order, entitled “Restoring Reality and Sanity to American Historical past,” claims that the Biden administration superior a “corrosive ideology” that “pressured Nationwide Historic Park rangers that their racial identification ought to dictate how they convey historical past to visiting Individuals as a result of America is purportedly racist.”
“Individuals have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s historical past, changing goal information with a distorted narrative pushed by ideology relatively than reality,” Trump’s govt order famous. “This revisionist motion seeks to undermine the outstanding achievements of the US by casting its founding rules and historic milestones in a detrimental gentle.”
Regardless of activists, historians, and organizations just like the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition petitioning towards the President’s order, an announcement from the Division of the Inside confirmed that the Philadelphia displays elimination was executed in accordance to Trump’s March 2025 directive.
“The President has directed federal companies to evaluation interpretive supplies to make sure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared nationwide values,” the division mentioned in an announcement to the New York Occasions. “Following completion of the required evaluation, the Nationwide Park Service is now taking motion to take away or revise interpretive supplies in accordance with the Order.”
As movies of crew members stripping the exhibit’s partitions circulated on-line, sparking outrage throughout the nation, one crew member reportedly saved repeating, “I’m simply following my orders.”
Hours after the displays’ elimination, the town of Philadelphia filed a federal lawsuit towards the Trump administration, particularly the US Inside Division, Secretary Doug Burgum, the Nationwide Park Service, and its performing director, Jessica Bowron.
“The interpretive shows regarding enslaved individuals at President’s Home are an integral a part of the exhibit and eradicating them could be a fabric alteration to the exhibit,” the town’s attorneys wrote within the lawsuit, per CNN. “With out discover to the Metropolis of Philadelphia, the Nationwide Park Service has eliminated art work and informational shows on the President’s Home website referencing slavery, presumably pursuant to the mandate within the Govt Order.”
They added: “Defendants have offered no clarification in any respect for his or her elimination of the historic, instructional shows on the President’s Home website, not to mention a reasoned one.”
The Philadelphia displays dismantling is barely the Trump administration’s newest try to erase and censor Black historical past from nationwide establishments. A few of the administration’s different actions on this previous yr have included the scrubbing of Black historic figures from federal web sites, ordering the elimination of things selling variety, fairness, and inclusion from Nationwide Parks present retailers, and extra.
