National Park Signage at President’s House in Philly Revealed: How It Contradicts the Truth

For instance, on one panel titled “Presidents Washington and Adams on Slavery,” the Trump administration writes that “Caught between his private doubts about slavery and his public responsibilities as president, George Washington navigated a nation deeply divided over slavery.”

“Privately, George Washington often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished,” the panel continued. “Yet as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.”

And later in the same panel: “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.”

The President’s House, which opened in 2010, is a product of local Black-led advocacy and serves as a memorial to the nine people Washington enslaved at his residence and a reminder of the contradiction of liberty and slavery during the nation’s founding.

Since last year, the Trump administration has scrutinized the site under an executive order that called for a review of displays at national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

The panels taken down by the Park Service in January included displays titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery” and “Life Under Slavery,” as well as illustrations about the Fugitive Slave Act and Ona Judge, who was enslaved by Washington and later escaped.

But the government is “celebrating and acknowledging the full breadth of our nation’s history,” a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said in a statement Wednesday.

The spokesperson said the Trump administration encourages visits to the President’s House and wants to acknowledge “the full breadth of our nation’s history” and that “No piece of history should be washed away.“

“The hard work and sacrifices of the men and women who built this nation deserve to be remembered and honored,” the spokesperson said.

Some similarities and acknowledgment of Black history can be found throughout the Trump administration’s version of the panels, such as mentions of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, Philadelphia’s Black abolitionists, and Washington signing the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Trump administration also refers to slavery as an “odious and pernicious affront to the glorious rule of liberty.”

But many stark differences remain in content and framing, including in the federal government’s account of the archaeological dig that took place at the site of the President’s House at Sixth and Market Streets during the exhibit’s development in the early 2000s.

The original panel, titled “History Lost & Found,” details the brutality of slavery, Washington’s role in it, and how slavery at the President’s House “undermined the meaning of freedom and mocked the nation’s pretense to be a beacon of liberty.”