The Trump administration fought to change a national park slavery exhibit. Here’s why Philadelphia vows to keep fighting back
By Danny Freeman, CNN
Philadelphia (CNN) — Just days away from America’s 250th birthday — and steps away from where the country itself was born — visitors to the City of Brotherly Love are met with an unusual sight: an incomplete national park.
“It’s a living historical moment,” said Mijuel Johnson, a local guide with a group called The Black Journey, who spends much of his working days giving tours around Philadelphia’s historic district.
Right next to some of the most recognizable landmarks in the United States — including where the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence — a months-long legal battle between the City of Philadelphia and the Trump administration over an exhibit on slavery has paralyzed a portion of Independence National Historic Park.
The fight is just one part of the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with the president’s political directives, supported by an executive order “restoring truth and sanity” to American history.
But in this case, the result has been physical missing pieces, a legal entanglement spanning multiple courts and parties, and a city galvanized to keep the history of slavery alive.
However, it’s unclear if the site will be restored, removed or replaced anytime soon. The next move is up to the federal government.
“Hopefully when all of this is put back up, we might be able to add something talking about this part of the history of the memorial,” Johnson told CNN, referring to the battle over the exhibit, as tourists passed through the site.
The conflict itself over how to represent slavery, Johnson argued, should eventually be memorialized too.
The past
The dispute surrounds the President’s House, a perhaps lesser-known open-air part of the Philadelphia national park, which includes the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived at the house.
For more than a decade, the President’s House has honored the lives of nine men and women enslaved by George Washington in one of the homes he resided in while president. The exhibit, which was created as a collaboration between the City of Philadelphia and the National Park Service, also featured a historical timeline of American slavery.
But as part of President Donald Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order and his administration’s nationwide effort to remove content in cultural institutions that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” the Department of Interior targeted the site for change.
In January, video from CNN affiliate WPVI showed work crews dismantling large display panels at the site with crowbars.
The City of Philadelphia sued to stop the federal government from changing the exhibit and initially won in court.
“…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,” wrote US District Court Judge Cynthia Rufe in a February opinion.
“It does not,” stated Rufe.
The original exhibits started to go back up.
But the Trump administration appealed, and the restoration stopped. The Department of Interior later proposed its own new exhibit focusing less on slavery than the original exhibit.
On June 18, a panel of three judges unanimously sided with the DOI, reversing a ruling the city won in February.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled not only did the City of Philadelphia no longer have ownership over the President’s House site, but it also concluded the Trump administration’s revised exhibit was “full of historical context.”
“(The new panels) acknowledge the evil of slavery, including its injustices and hypocrisies, and, by telling the story of the nine slaves that Washington kept in the President’s House, remind us of their essential humanity,” read the opinion authored by Thomas Hardiman, a George W. Bush appointed judge.
Johnson, the local guide, looked down and held back a laugh when CNN read aloud the language of the opinion, which came down the day before Juneteenth.
Since the government released their proposed panels in April, advocates for the old exhibit have argued the new panels whitewash the horrors of slavery, while softening George Washington’s views on it.
For example, one of the original panels noted that at his Virginia plantation, President Washington “oversaw more than 300 enslaved people, nine of whom served in his Philadelphia household.”
One of the new replacement panels on the subject does not share the number of slaves Washington owned and instead reads in part: “privately, George Washington often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished.”
“Yet as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.”
An analysis from the Philadelphia Inquirer also notes, “most of the new panels do not acknowledge the people Washington enslaved.”
“Regardless of what the new panels say,” Johnson said, “they’re not the original panels that were made for this site. And they’re not necessary.”
The present
The ruling came as a gut punch to the city, some say, as many believed the matter was over.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker pledged on X to “pursue every legal action possible” to reverse the decision.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote he would “stand up to anyone who tries to whitewash some of the most important chapters of our shared history.”
Civil rights activist and attorney Michael Coard was not surprised.
“Every single advance that Black people have gotten in this country since the birth of American slavery in 1619 came with struggle,” argued Coard, who leads the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, which helped create the President’s House site more than 15 years ago.
“Even though I wasn’t surprised, I was prepared,” Coard said.
While Coard would not say what specific actions his group would take next, as they are a party in the case, he and others noted the story isn’t over.
The City of Philadelphia could request the full Third Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case or even appeal to the Supreme Court. Coard also noted his group could file a new separate complaint.
When asked about potential next steps this week, the city had no official comment beyond the mayor’s original X statement.
But some in the city are waiting to see how a separate court battle in Boston over changes to multiple national parks, including the President’s House, plays out for answers.
CNN reached out to the White House and the Department of Interior to ask if changes at the Philadelphia national park are planned before the Fourth of July, when visitors from all over the globe are expected to visit the city for 250th celebrations and the World Cup.
The White House deferred CNN’s questions to the Department of Justice. Neither the DOJ or the DOI have responded.
And for now the President’s House remains conspicuously incomplete.
The future
A week after the appeals court ruling, a group of local volunteers spoke with tourists as they passed through the President’s House.
The amateur docents were eagerly sharing binders with the text of the original missing panels and reading them out loud.
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I am,” said Coard, “I have to thank President Trump.”
Because of the controversy, Coard argued, the lesser-known slavery exhibit had received “more PR and street cred than we could have ever paid for.”
And area residents are also there to learn from the exhibit.
“We have our friends here literally from the neighborhood. They’re just over here reading (the text of the removed panels),” Johnson said.
“That’s not a solution at all — everything needs to be put back — but that shows how much people in Philly actually care about the history,” said the professional tour guide.
Patricia Jones, a Philadelphia native and local high school history teacher, heard about the President’s House battle and wanted to see the site for herself.
“I think no matter what people are going to research and want to know (the history of slavery at the site),” Jones told CNN.
“There’s always going to be someone that can tell the history and the true story no matter what,” she said as she flipped through a binder of the original text of the exhibit.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
