How Trump Brought the Fight Over American History to Philadelphia - The New York Times
The administration took a crowbar to a site that focused on George Washington and slavery. But can the contradictions of the Founding Era be erased?
In Philadelphia, a few steps from the Liberty Bell, there stands a ghost house. It consists of partially reconstructed red brick walls, an empty door frame and windows and, etched on a free-standing stone slab, the names of nine enslaved people who served George Washington there.
The President’s House, as the open-air site is known, was the seat of the executive branch of the United States’ fledgling democracy from 1790 to 1800, when Washington and then John Adams lived there. But since Jan. 22, when workers arrived unannounced with crowbars and pried all 30 interpretive signs off the walls, it has become a front in the red-hot political battle over American history.
The National Park Service, whose leadership ordered the removals, says it was merely complying with President Trump’s executive order last March calling for the removal or revision of displays that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
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| Since the removals, local people have come to the site, which is next to the Liberty Bell, to tape up messages, share information and read aloud. |
