With a court-imposed deadline of Friday, Feb. 19 to restore dismantled exhibits on slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia, the National Park Service has put up the historical signage detailing George Washington’s history of enslaving Black people at the house. The signage detailed Washington’s relationship with enslavement and also gave a brief look at the lives of the nine men and women held captive there.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, a Republican, made a preliminary decision on the case earlier this week when she compared the Federal government’s behavior to that of Big Brother in the novel 1984. She wrote that “As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ 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.”
Immediately after the removal at the end of January, rallies for the restoration of the signs took place almost every day and people concerned about the loss of historical interpretation began placing their own handmade historic signs there. The City of Philadelphia filed a law suit which got an immediate order from Judge Rufe telling the government to stop any additional changes at the site. Judge Rufe then inspected the site and the signage and came back with an order to restore the signs.
The signage had been removed following President Trump’s new policy of removing National Park’s signs that are critical of historical figures. 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.
Philadelphia is not the only place where this attack on history is taking place. At Fort Sumter signs had been taken down earlier in January 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.
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