3 days ago
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Philadelphia is taking legal action against the Trump administration following the National Park Service’s decision to dismantle a long-established slavery-related exhibit at Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington.
The city filed its lawsuit in federal court on Thursday, naming the US Department of Interior and its secretary, Doug Burgum, the National Park Service, and its acting director, Jessica Bowron, as defendants. The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the exhibits to be restored while the case proceeds.
The display stood at the President’s House site, once home to George Washington and John Adams, and included information recognizing people enslaved by Washington, along with a broader chronology of slavery in the US.
“The interpretive displays relating to enslaved persons at President’s House are an integral part of the exhibit and removing them would be a material alteration to the exhibit,” city lawyers wrote in the legal filing. According to the suit, officials were not informed in advance that the exhibit would be changed.
The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, sharply criticized the decision to take down the signs, arguing that Trump “will take any opportunity to rewrite and whitewash our history”.
“But he picked the wrong city – and he sure as hell picked the wrong Commonwealth,” Shapiro added in a message posted on X. “We learn from our history in Pennsylvania, even when it’s painful.”
Kenyatta Johnson, the Philadelphia city council president, said in a statement on Thursday: “Removing the exhibits is an effort to whitewash American history. History cannot be erased simply because it is uncomfortable. Removing items from the President’s House merely changes the landscape, not the historical record.”
Congress had encouraged the National Park Service in 2003 to formally acknowledge the enslaved people who lived and worked at the President’s House. The lawsuit states that in 2006, the city and the agency agreed to collaborate on creating an exhibit for the site, which opened in 2010 with a memorial and informational panels focused on slavery.
The removal of the exhibit is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to eliminate cultural content that does not align with his policy agenda.
In an executive order issued last March, Trump accused the Biden administration of promoting “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” and instructed the interior secretary to alter materials under the department’s control that “have been improperly removed or changed in the last five years to perpetuate a false revision of history or improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events”.
Changes have already been made to Smithsonian Institution displays mentioning Trump since his return to office. Text discussing his impeachment and his role in the 6 January 2021, attack on the Capitol was removed from the area near his new official portrait at the National Portrait Gallery.
