PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore the President’s House slavery exhibit on Independence Mall to its condition before it was dismantled by the National Park Service last month.
Judge Cynthia Rufe issued a blistering, 40-page opinion on President’s Day that began with a paragraph from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ now existed with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’” she wrote, “this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts… It does not.”
Rufe ruled on an injunction request brought by the City of Philadelphia on Jan. 22, the day the Park Service, without notice, took down displays that told the story of the Africans that George Washington held as slaves in the house at 6th and Market streets during the early days of the United States.
Rufe found that the city had shown it was likely to win its argument that the removal was arbitrary and capricious in violation of its 1950 agreement with the National Park Service, establishing Independence National Historic Park.
She wrote that the only rationale given for the sudden removal was an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last March that instructed the Interior Secretary to ensure that federal property does not contain “content that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living.”
However, Rufe wrote, “that action violates the expressed intention of the same EO the government claims motivated it. EO 14253 seeks to prevent revisionist attempts to ‘replace objective facts with a distorted narrative.’ NPS’s action did the opposite, by dismantling objective historical truths.”
Rufe also disputed the argument that the EO could grant the power to remove the slavery exhibit.
“The government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control,” she writes. “Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother’s domain in Orwell’s 1984… The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power.”
Rufe also found that the city and advocates who filed amici briefs in the case showed that irreparable harm is caused by the continued absence of the exhibit.
“Each person who visits the President’s House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery receives a false account of this country’s history,” she wrote.
The judge’s ruling came as the leading force behind the exhibit, the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, held its annual rally at the site.
“I’m ecstatic. What we had hoped for, the best we could hope for, we got,” said Attorney Michael Coard.
Coard said he was realistic, though, and expects the government to appeal.
Neither the U.S. Attorney’s office, which argued the case for the government, nor the NPS had any immediate comment.
The judge’s order includes a provision that NPS cannot make any other changes at the site and cannot damage any of the materials that were removed.
It not only orders that the slavery exhibit be restored to the condition it was in on Jan. 21, but requires that NPS must provide immediate, continued and proper maintenance to the site and must keep it clean and accessible, cleared of snow, ice and any other impediment.
Rufe wrote that her order does not infringe on the government’s right to send “whatever message it wants to send by wiping away the history of the greatest Founding Father’s management of persons he held in bondage. President Washington’s house would not merit designation as a historic site if he had not commanded the army that won the Revolutionary War, whose presence presiding over the Constitutional Convention graced it with the gravitas and spirit necessary to the creation of our government’s foundational document, and his restraint and modesty radiated strength and wisdom that defines the ideal chief executive to this day. The government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the President's House until it follows the law and consults with the City.”