Members of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) gathered in Center City near the President’s House site Wednesday morning to rally for the return of placards and displays related to the location’s ties to slavery that were taken down last week by National Park Service employees.
The rally came two days before the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is scheduled to hear the city of Philadelphia’s lawsuit objecting to the exhibition’s removal, filed against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Acting Director of the Park Service Jessica Bowron and both their respective agencies.
“We hope the courts do the right thing from a legal standpoint, but … we’re taking the page out of the civil rights struggle from the 1950s and ‘60s,” said attorney and ATAC founder Michael Coard. “There’s an activist strategy and there’s a litigation strategy. We’re pushing both.”
Coard spoke to the gathering outside the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse before the group walked to 6th and Market streets to the site where America’s first “White House” stood until 1832. A mobile billboard with messages about the President’s House and the group followed the crowd down Market Street.
The removed panels were part of The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation, an exhibition installed in 2010. It detailed the lives of the nine enslaved people who George Washington brought to Philadelphia during his presidency and explored his personal involvement in slavery.
Federal employees used crowbars and wrenches to remove the signage from the walls of the monument in less than two hours. The signage — which was created and partially funded by the city and private donors — was placed to the side and eventually driven off in a pickup truck. Its storage location has not been shared.
The action was apparently the fulfillment of a White House executive order calling for the removal of displays in U.S. national parks that “disparage” the nation.
Several park visitors opposed the removal as it occurred, and members of the public filled the empty frames with messages of protest in the following days. Before the group disbanded Wednesday, many demonstrators taped their protest signs to the walls as well. One of them was Cherry Hill resident Barbara Patrizzi, whose sign read “Tell the truth. History has its eyes on you. Act with integrity.”
“This country has to get real and recognize that our history includes some dark things as well as heroic things,” she said. “We have to recognize that, acknowledge it and do better, do better than we’ve been doing.”
The exhibit’s removal last Thursday caught the city, and those who had worked to make the exhibit a reality, by surprise.
ATAC had a key role in ensuring that the story of the enslaved people was recognized and — along with historians, faith leaders and tour guides — and had been protesting the impending move. Coard said finding out was disappointing, but not surprising, and the group had been preparing for this outcome.
“What happened last Thursday was poking the bear, and this bear was hibernating,” he said. “But now we’re up, we’re roaring and we’re going to do much more than we did in the beginning. It was a fight to win the battle in 2010. It’s going to be a bigger fight to win it in 2026.”
The city quickly filed a lawsuit after the exhibits were removed, claiming there was a 2006 agreement that required the National Park Service to consult with the city before making any changes to the exhibit. The city said that did not occur. Mayor Parker released a recorded speech on Tuesday night outlining the city’s case.
ATAC has filed an amicus brief supporting the city, as has Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and others. Coard said the group’s goals go beyond just getting the displays returned.
“We’re demanding, one, that we save the site. Two, that we enhance the site. And three, that we replicate the site all across the country,” he said.
ATAC has also hosted multiple online town halls since the exhibition’s removal. Radio station WURD broadcast the most recent one Tuesday night.
Many who gathered Wednesday said they plan to return for Friday’s court hearing, including ATAC supporter Desiree Whitfield.
“We’re going to pack out that courtroom,” she said. “It’s going to be an overflow, and the world is going to see: Don’t come from Philadelphia if we didn’t call you, number one. And number two, you cannot erase our history.”
The post Supporters of the President’s House slavery exhibit gather ahead of court date on its future appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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