"The city of Philadelphia is suing the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Park Service (NPS) after officials removed wall text and illustrations describing slavery from a historical park on Thursday, January 22. The removal of exhibits about slavery from Independence National Historical Park comes months after Trump named the site in an executive order calling for reviews of exhibits at the Smithsonian and the National Parks system."
"According to Philadelphia's lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court, the removed items were part of the $8.5 million outdoor exhibition Freedom and Slavery in Making a New Nation, created in 2009 on the park's President's House. The exhibition commemorated the lives of nine enslaved individuals whom George Washington brought to his residence. One panel, titled "The Dirty Business of Slavery," described the Constitution's failure to outlaw slavery, including its designation of enslaved individuals as three-fifths of a person. It also contained a graphic depicting the routes of the trans-Atlantic slave trade."
The city of Philadelphia filed a federal lawsuit after National Park Service officials removed wall text and illustrations about slavery from Independence National Historical Park on January 22. Footage showed staff dismantling labels from an exhibition that is located at the President's House, the site where the Liberty Bell and the residences of early presidents are located. The removals follow a March 2025 executive order directing the Department of the Interior to review displays for content that might "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living." The removed items were part of an $8.5 million outdoor exhibition created in 2009 that honored nine enslaved individuals brought to the President's House by George Washington, including a panel titled "The Dirty Business of Slavery" that described constitutional failures to outlaw slavery and displayed a trans-Atlantic slave-trade map.
#independence-national-historical-park #slavery-exhibits #philadelphia-lawsuit #national-park-service #trump-executive-order
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