Trump Whitewashes George Washington’s Slavery History in New Display
The panels installed by the administration in Philadelphia come just six months after Trump ordered the removal of the outdoor exhibition Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation.
Following a legal battle between the city of Philadelphia and the Trump administration, federal officials replaced exhibits describing the history of slavery in the United States at a Pennsylvania historical park.
Last Wednesday, July 15, the Trump administration complied with a court order to restore exhibits it had abruptly removed from Independence National Historical Park in January as part of an order to ensure its exhibits did not “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” However, federal judges this month allowed the administration to install altered panels that minimize the Founding Fathers' participation in the institution of slavery, according to local activists.
The new texts replace the longstanding outdoor exhibition, Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation, co-created by the city and the federal government at the President’s House site in 2010 and removed in January under President Trump’s orders.
Michael Coard, a trial attorney and founder of the advocacy group Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC), which joined the city’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over the panel removals, described the new exhibits to Hyperallergic as “ sanitized, whitewashed, and censored.”
Since 2002, ATAC has led a push to compel the National Park Service to create a permanent memorial dedicated to the nine individuals Washington enslaved in his Philadelphia residence.
Coard said the new panels overemphasized George Washington’s role in drafting the Fairfax Resolves, a 1774 document that called for the end of the “wicked,” “cruel,” and “unnatural” slave trade. The new texts also make no mention of the hundreds of individuals whom the president enslaved, Coard said.
“Privately, George Washington often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished,” the alternative text reads. “Yet as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.”
“ If he had discomfort, what the hell did they have?” Coard said. “Why highlight the discomfort of the victimizer and ignore the hell of the victims?”
Another new text reads: “Slaves living in the President’s House experienced a greater modicum of autonomy than elsewhere in the South, such as to explore the city and sometimes even attend the theater, with Washington buying the tickets.”
“ It [is] outrageous because the definition of slavery is no autonomy,” Coard said.
In February, Philadelphia federal judge Cynthia M. Rufe ordered the administration to restore the exhibition in a scathing opinion that compared Trump’s tactics to those of George Orwell’s fictional Big Brother character. The Trump administration then tried to install its new versions of the plaques, but was prevented by an appeals court from doing so until this month.
“ You can try to tidy up by putting out this information about George Washington, but the bottom line is that you don't like the issue of slavery being taught,” Coard said.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, the Department of the Interior (DOI) said the agency was “pleased the Courts have sided with the Trump administration on restoring truth and sanity to our country in our nation's 250th.”
“[The exhibits] acknowledge the evils of slavery, including its injustices and hypocrisies, and, by telling the stories of the nine slaves that Washington kept in the President’s House, remind us of their essential humanity,” the DOI spokesperson continued. “The panels also recall the price our nation paid to finish the work that the Founders had begun and end slavery in the United States once and for all.”
Coard said that he and ATAC would pursue “all available legal options” in their fight against the federal government for the new exhibition.
“ What this president has done with regard to the President's House lays the foundation for himself or the next right-wing fascist president to get rid of any symbols he doesn't like,” Coard said.
