Park Service and Justice Department – Erasing select portions of our American history
The Benicia Herald, [Updated May 19, 2026], by Stephen Golub
Illuminating History
The Trump administration is engaged in a multipronged attempt to rewrite history. During a recent trip to Philadelphia, I visited one example of that effort’s egregious excesses.
Inaugurated in 2010, the central Philly “President’s House” is an open-air exhibition that documents George and Martha Washington’s roles as slaveholders. It’s situated where our first First Couple lived, from 1790 to 1797. Though the abode itself is long gone, the site is anchored by an excavation of their home’s slave quarters.
In other words, America’s first “White House” housed slaves.
The exhibition’s informational panels, displays and videos movingly portray the context and cruelty of the Washingtons’ actions, including the lives of the nine persons considered their “property.” A loophole-ridden Pennsylvania law ostensibly allowed slaves belonging to other states’ residents (such as the Washingtons, who were Virginians) to free themselves after six months in Pennsylvania. But this was easily evaded by “rotating” the enslaved out of the state, however briefly.
The site is not entirely negative. It describes Ben Franklin’s advocacy for abolition. In a bit more depth, it also tells the story of Oney Judge, Martha’s personal slave. As described elsewhere, she escaped during a two-day “rotation” to Trenton, New Jersey. Judge made her way to live freely (and eventually pass away) in New Hampshire. George repeatedly but unsuccessfully sought to compel her return, including via a foiled kidnapping attempt in 1798.
All in all, then, the modest several-hundred-foot exhibition has educated visitors about an element of Washington’s identity and our history that typically is not taught in schools. Situated right next door to the Liberty Bell Center and surrounded by numerous other historical monuments, the President’s House serves as an illuminating counterpoint to those other sites’ legitimately positive themes. As I heard one father explain to his ten(?)-year-old son, “Our country has done some bad things.”
More Bad Things…
Out of the blue, however, on January 22 the U.S. Park Service dismantled the site. Quickly challenged by a City of Philadelphia lawsuit, the Department of Justice contended that the exhibition “inappropriately disparage[d] Americans” as part of an effort to promote “corrosive ideology.”
In deciding the case, Federal Judge Cynthia M. Rufe strenuously disagreed. The George W. Bush appointee prefaced her decision to restore the exhibition by quoting George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984:
“All history was…scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”
As she further explained in her ruling, “It is not disputed that President Washington owned slaves…And yet, in its argument, the government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control.”
Likening the Trump administration’s argument to 1984, she continued, “The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten… And why? Solely because, as Defendants [the government] state, it has the power.”
Judge Rufe accordingly ordered the reinstatement of the exhibition. But an April appeals court interim ruling froze that reinstatement about half-way through the process.
That’s where the matter stands, pending full consideration by that court. Supplemented by hand-made signs, the displays again enable some basic education about slavery and Washington’s roles in it. Those roles included signing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which permitted slaveholders or their agents to cross state lines to capture escaped slaves, and his own attempts to use the law to seize Ona Judge.
Erasing History
The Trump administration’s planned, whitewashed (so to speak) replacement for the anti-slavery exhibition erases such facts or buries them in supposed context. It lavishes Washington with praise, while relegating his conduct to a few lines explaining that he considered freeing his slaves, let them “explore the city” and otherwise treated them better than some other slaveholders. It also notes that Washington’s will provided for freeing his own slaves (though Martha’s remained in bondage); with the exception of one man’s wife and children, however, the text is very vague about who was freed.
I’m by no means saying that we should deny Washington’s great contributions to our country by removing his name from schools and institutions or otherwise dishonoring him. He was a product of his time – though let’s bear in mind that, like Ben Franklin, many in his time in America and abroad opposed slavery. Regardless, in a sense we dishonor him by denying the truth about him; we certainly dishonor those enslaved by him and so many other people pummeled for their entire lives by slavery’s savagery.
The administration’s official efforts to cancel history involve far more than attempts to cover up aspects of such bondage. They certainly embrace recent history: We’re witnessing endless attempts by Trump and his sycophants to deny the 2020 presidential election results, with many such attempts geared toward manipulating the 2026 and 2028 contests. He’s pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists, painted them as heroes and even established a $1.776 billion federal fund that could feature compensation for them and other Trump allies who were supposedly “unjustly” targeted for prosecution by the Biden administration.
We’ve also seen Trump almost literally echo 1984’s “War is Peace” declaration with his claims that the Iran ceasefire is in effect even as missiles fly and people die
Nor am I asserting that America in 2026 is anywhere near Orwell’s 1984. But we do have a president for whom the novel’s totalitarian catchphrases provide more of a model than an admonition:
War is Peace.
Ignorance is Strength.
Freedom is Slavery.
[Hat tip to Pat Loeb, a superb journalist (and old friend) who is currently City Hall Bureau Chief for KYW Newsradio in Philadelphia and who acquainted me with the President’s House exhibition and this evolving story.]
Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.
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