The Trump administration will be allowed to replace an exhibit on slavery at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia, a federal appeals court panel said on Thursday.
The ruling struck down a lower court decision that said the National Park Service must restore the exhibit, which it had torn down to comply with the president’s executive order last year on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”
In January, NPS removed the six-panel outdoor display, which documented the lives of people enslaved by Washington during the fight for independence. It was unveiled in 2010 after years of community advocacy, WHYY reported.
“It was the grand opening of the first slave memorial of its kind on federal property in the history of the U.S. We thought it would last forever. But 15 years later, the destruction came,” activist Michael Coard said to NPR.
Philadelphia quickly sued the Interior Department to restore the exhibit, and won. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ordered the Trump administration to put the panels back up, comparing the administration’s efforts to those taken by the totalitarian government in George Orwell’s 1984.
But now, the Trump administration will be allowed to replace the exhibit with its own version of history. The three-judge panel on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals praised the administration’s plan for a new installation, saying that it was “full of historical context.” The new exhibit will no longer center slavery or enslaved peoples’ role in the creation of the United States, and has been accused by advocates of “whitewashing.”
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said she would fight the decision, writing, “We cannot and WILL not rest until the full story of American history – including the existence of Slavery at the President’s House here in Philadelphia – is told, for our Nation and the World to see.”
As the country celebrates Juneteenth, the commemoration of the day when the last enslaved people in America were finally emancipated, the administration is fighting to erase Black history.
