A months-long legal battle between the City of Philadelphia and the Trump administration has paralyzed a portion of Independence National Historic Park. The fight is over an exhibit on slavery, which the Trump administration sought to change as part of its campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with the president’s political directives.
The Exhibit
The exhibit, located at the President’s House, honors the lives of nine men and women enslaved by George Washington in one of the homes he resided in while president. The exhibit features a historical timeline of American slavery and notes that at his Virginia plantation, President Washington “oversaw more than 300 enslaved people, nine of whom served in his Philadelphia household.”
The Trump administration’s revised exhibit, proposed in April, focuses less on slavery than the original exhibit. The new panels acknowledge the evil of slavery but do not share the number of slaves Washington owned. Instead, they note that Washington “often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished” in private.
The Battle
The City of Philadelphia sued to stop the federal government from changing the exhibit and initially won in court. However, the Trump administration appealed, and the restoration of the original exhibit stopped. On June 18, a panel of three judges unanimously sided with the Department of the Interior, reversing a ruling the city won in February.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker pledged to “pursue every legal action possible” to reverse the decision. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote that he would “stand up to anyone who tries to whitewash some of the most important chapters of our shared history.” Civil rights activist and attorney Michael Coard argued that the controversy has given the exhibit “more PR and street cred than we could have ever paid for.”
Local volunteers have taken to sharing the text of the original missing panels with tourists, and area residents are learning from the exhibit. The city could request the full Third Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case or even appeal to the Supreme Court.
Original reporting: KEYT (Ventura/Santa Barbara) — read the source article.
