PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The City of Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the removal of slavery exhibits at the President's House on Independence Mall. Videos online show members of the National Park Service removing plaques on Thursday afternoon.
The lawsuit, which names the interior secretary and the acting National Park Service director, says a cooperative agreement signed in 2006 requires the federal government to confer with the city before any changes are made to the site.
The site at Sixth and Market streets was home to Presidents George Washington and John Adams, serving as the country’s first executive mansion. The free outdoor exhibit included panels about slaves owned by Washington.
Now, all that’s left are bare metal backings where the displays once were.
The removal has brought outrage from community members and local elected officials. In a statement, Congressman Brendan Boyle blamed the Trump administration for the plaque removals.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “I am proud of our country and the ideals on which it was founded, and telling the full truth about our history, both the good and the bad, is essential to preserving those ideals.”
He went on to say that the National Park Service faces budget cuts ahead of the nation’s 250th celebration — a lot of which will center on Philadelphia — and the administration “should be strengthening these historic sites, not censoring them to erase the past.
“Philadelphia and the entire country deserve an honest accounting of our history, and this effort to hide it is wrong,” Boyle said.
Last spring, President Donald Trump ordered a review of National Park displays that “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. for their potential removal. The plaques at the President’s House were thought to be an eventual target, but weren’t touched until Thursday afternoon.
“Slavery is not Black history. Slavery is American history,” said Michael Coard, with Avenging the Ancestors Coalition. “You can’t tell the story of America without telling the story of slavery.”
“It’s incumbent upon us to ensure that the story of people like Oney Judge, Richmond, Hercules, and some of the other people enslaved by the Washingtons are told, and told in their totality,” added Dr. Timothy Welbeck, director of Temple University’s Center for Anti-Racism. “This attempt to sanitize history does a great disservice to who we are as a nation, and we can’t forget the horrors and the atrocities that were suffered by the enslaved for two and a half centuries in this nation.”
In a statement, a U.S. Department of the Interior spokesperson said: "The Department of the Interior is implementing Secretary’s Order 3431, which carries out President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order on 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.' All federal agencies are to review interpretive materials to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values. Following completion of the required review, the National Park Service is now taking appropriate action in accordance with the Order. We encourage the City of Philadelphia to focus on getting their jobless rates down and ending their reckless cashless bail policy instead of filing frivolous lawsuits in the hopes of demeaning our brave Founding Fathers who set the brilliant road map for the greatest country in the world – the United States of America."
The National Park Service web page for Independence Hall displays an alert that says it will be closed until Jan. 28 for preservation projects in preparation for the semiquincentennial celebrations.