Yesterday, three National Park employees took down panels explaining George Washington’s involvement with slavery. The signs were placed around George Washington’s home in Philadelphia where he lived during the early years of the new Republic. The Trump administration issued a statement saying it was taking down interpretive materials that contain a “corrosive ideology.”

According to historian John Garrison Marks, the President’s House in Philadelphia was only discovered in the 1990s. It is not a “house,” it is the foundation and ruins of the house. The panels commemorate the nine slaves who served the Washington’s while in Philadelphia as well as explanation of the president’s involvement with slavery.  Washington was the biggest slave owner in his county in Virginia and he profited from the work of African Americans. However he did say that slavery would eventually end and in his will he provided for the freeing of slaves at Mount Vernon after his wife Martha died.

The discussion of putting up panels began more than two decades ago at the Philadelphia site. They were erected fifteen years ago. There had been other acknowledgements of Washington’s involvement with slavery at other sites. For example, at Washington’s Virginia home there has been a lot of research done into the lives of slaves. By 1983, Mount Vernon did put in explanatory markers describing Washington and slavery. In the 1960s, Mount Vernon did start preserving remnants of slavery. In the 1920s there was erected a memorial to the slaves there, but it was largely ignored by visitors to the site. So for nearly a hundred years that iconic site has wrestled with presenting slavery.

The NPS staff has been blamed for taking down the panels, but they have been ordered from Washington.  President Trump had issued an order calling for taking down signs that may make white people feel bad. Many sites were required to submit for review signage that was potentially “controversial” earlier, and this week seems to begin the rewriting of history on the ground at the sites.

Philadelphia is not the only place where this attack on history is taking place. At Fort Sumter signs had been taken down earlier this week explaining how the site is threatened by rising seas. At Lowell National Historic Site where a 19th Century factory town has been preserved, two films were removed that explain the lives of 19th Century immigrant and women workers.

While other sites are tremendously important for teaching history, in 2026 the country will be focused on Independence Hall and Revolutionary sites in Philadelphia for the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence. Removing them means that this unique opportunity to teach people about this aspect of our history will be lost.

President Trump issued an Executive Order in March in which he said that interpretive materials like the panels, should be removed and should be replaced with materials that “instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.” Apparently describing the lives of Black workers does not do that.

Philadelphia filed a Federal lawsuit seeking an injunction to force the National Park Service to restore the panels. The suit says that the removal was done without notice and presumably at the direction of President Donald Trump.

Gov. Josh Shapiro  wrote yesterday that President Trump “will take any opportunity to rewrite and whitewash our history.” The governor of Pennsylvania said “But he picked the wrong city — and he sure as hell picked the wrong Commonwealth,” he said in a post on the social platform X. “We learn from our history in Pennsylvania, even when it’s painful.”

Call your Congressional Representative to let them know how you feel about this.

I went to the Historical Marker DataBase which records what was on the now removed panels. Here are the words on one:

Enslaved Africans in the Household of George and Martha Washington

Inscription. 
At various times during Washington’s stay in Philadelphia, nine enslaved Africans were known to have lived and worked here at the President’s House. They were dynamic participants in the daily life of the presidential household and the surrounding city. Painstaking research by modern scholars provides us with a glimpse into the lives of these people. The brief biographies that follow help us better understand their lives. They also serve to represent the thousands of free and enslaved people of African descent who lived and toiled here in Philadelphia and who helped build a new nation.

Austin, half brother of Ona Judge. He died on December 20, 1794, after a fall from a horse while returning to Mt. Vernon, leaving a wife and five children.

Christopher Sheets attempted to escape from Mt. Vernon in 1799, but was unsuccessful. His fate after Martha Washington’s death in 1802 is unknown.

Giles was a driver, postillion, and stable hand. He returned to Mt. Vernon in 1791, after being injured in an accident during Washington’s tour of the southern states. He died before 1799.

Hercules

served for many years as cook both at Mt. Vernon and in Philadelphia. He seized his freedom just before the family retired to Mt. Vernon. He was celebrated for his mastery of his craft and for setting exacting standards for kitchen workers. Even though Hercules fled from bondage in 1797, he was legally freed in Washington’s will.

Joe (Richardson) is mentioned in 1795 as “Postillion Joe,” although his time in Philadelphia is uncertain. He was married to a woman freed (along with their children) after Washington’s death, whereupon the family took the name Richardson.

Moll was nursemaid to Martha Washington’s two grandchildren. She also served as nursemaid to Martha’s children, from her first marriage and later at Mt. Vernon.

Ona/Oney Judge was, like her mother, a talented seamstress. She became Martha Washington’s personal maid as a teenager. In 1796, Ona seized her freedom and escaped to New Hampshire, where she lived until her death in 1848. In New Hampshire, she married a free black sailor named Jack Staines and had three children, who all died before her.

Paris was a young stable hand. He was returned to Mt. Vernon in 1791 for “unsatisfactory behavior” and died in 1794.

Richmond came to Philadelphia at the age of 11 with his father, Hercules. He worked in the kitchen briefly but returned to Mt. Vernon in 1791. His later fate is unknown.

Ona’s EscapeAfter Ona escaped from Philadelphia, Washington tried relentlessly to recapture her. He discovered where she had gone when a friend of Martha Washington’s granddaughter happened to encounter Ona in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Washington wrote to the Collector of Customs in Portsmouth and requested that he apprehend Ona and send her back. After speaking with Ona, the New Hampshire official declined to do so. Two years later, Washington asked his secretary and nephew, Burwell Bassett, Jr., to seize Ona and her child, born since her escape. Bassett confided his intentions to John Langdon, the Governor of New Hampshire and Langdon sent a warning to Ona. She escaped, yet again and fled with her child. Near the end of her life, when Ona was old and had outlived all of her family, people who spoke with her were impressed by her dignity, her faith in God, and her abiding love of freedom.

Here is another panel:

Contagion and Liberty

The Yellow Fever Epidemic and the Revolution in Saint Domingue

Inscription.   In the 1790s, slave owners escaping the slave rebellion in Saint Domingue (now Haiti) came to Philadelphia, bringing enslaved Africans, yellow fever, and the suspicion that slavery might yield “dreadful insurrections.”

A third panel:

Oney Escapes!

Inscription.   Still a fugitive in her seventies, Ona Judge Staines (earlier called Oney Judge) tells the story of her enslavement in the President’s House and her escape to freedom, in 1796, to New Hampshire, where she married John Staines and had three children.

A fourth panel:

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