The President’s House in Philadelphia is a monument to those who educate visitors about their connection to slavery in Washington.
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Philadelphia – Michael Code is a criminal defense lawyer who peers at his thoughts on the president’s home with familiar courtroom phrases.
“We need to tell you the truth, the truth and only the truth,” he said many times while discussing the exhibition at the president’s home away from Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia’s historic district.
The truth on display in the President’s House is that founding father and first president, General George Washington, who led the battle for American independence, owned humans, benefited from their unpaid workers, and tried for years to recapture them when one of them took a break for freedom. And while he lived in Philadelphia and then the capital of the country, Washington protected those who were enslaved to the house where he lived.
Meanwhile, other displays telling the stories of enslaved people are being scrutinized by the Trump administration as part of an exhibition that says it “inappropriately stores Americans” as reviews of monuments, monuments and museum exhibits. Trump and some conservatives believe that historic sites and museums are focusing too much on painful elements of the US past, including Native American slavery, displacement, murder, racism and discrimination. The president said the focus should provide a “false reconstruction of American history,” and that federally funded sites should instead promote ideas of patriotism and American exceptionalism.
For now, all displays of the president’s home remain intact and there is no immediate plan to remove or modify them, Coard said. But he and a group of activists, parents and others know about the controversy on sites, including the Smithsonian and the Museum of African-American History and Culture, but he said he still has a backup plan.
In an email response to USA Today’s investigation into the site, the NPS said it was following Trump’s order “restore the truth and sanity to American history.” The statement did not provide details on how the order would affect the president’s home.
Because Philadelphia area residents Sheldon and Brenda Rich visited the president’s home on September 18th and wanted to include the exhibits if they were to be exhibited or changed. “I think the current administration is doing its best to create a revised version of history on slavery,” Sheldon Rich said.
Coard, which led an effort to recognize the site as a former home for those enslaved decades ago, is part of a grassroots coalition of people in and around Philadelphia, who work to ensure that the president’s home, which is part of an Independent National Park, is not changed, altered, excluded or censored.
“It won’t be lost,” he vowed.
The President’s House: Paradox of Freedom and Slavery
Sitting outside the president’s home on a warm September afternoon, coard said that both Washington and John Adams (who had never owned a slave) never knew about the places they had been enslaved there and those who were enslaved there while attending one of the city’s most prestigious high schools and nearby HBCU, Cheney University.
Located at the busy intersection of Sixth Avenue and Market Street, the site has been forgotten for decades when it was covered as the city grew. In 2002, historian of the Independent Hall Association, Ed Lawler published a paper on the site and when the National Park Service prepared to move the Liberty Bell to a new pavilion nearby, archaeologists began excavating evidence from the House. Meanwhile, coard and a group of activists formed the vengeance of the Ancestors’ Union (ATAC) and lobbyed the city and the National Park Service for monuments to enslaved people. It finally became a reality in 2010.
“Slavery was in America’s first White House,” Coard said. “If you want to call (Washington) a great general, do it. If you want to call him a great president, do it. No one opposes it. But this is history, and he circulated slaves both inside and outside of Philadelphia (phasing out Pennsylvania’s Slavery Act of 1780).” It is the reality that Code and what he called the “rainbow coalition” of activists must be recognized as just as part of Washington’s legacy as his achievements and leadership.
The site contains the stories of people like Oinkijj, a tailor born in Mount Vernon and fled from slavery while in Philadelphia, and was considered a fugitive by Washington, who had tried to get her back for years. and Hercules Posey, a chef famous in both Virginia and Philadelphia, who fled slavery and was eventually given a manuscript by both George and Martha Washington. The reenactors share in their video presentations what life was like for those enslaved. Displays teach visitors about the business of slavery, how enslaved people gained freedom (or not), and how they gained wages and unpaid labor in colonial America.
The President’s House, Liberty Bell and Independence Hall were all bustling on the day coard met USA Today. Tourists and locals stopped by. Many supported the presentation of plain facts about the first president.
“They’re making videos on Philadelphia’s historic sites,” said John McCann, YouTube’s content creator who makes videos on Philadelphia’s historic site.
Hunter Dean, a Louisiana native and Texas resident, visits with his family, describes himself as “very patriotic” and wears a shirt that reads, “I defend the Second Amendment with the Second Amendment.”
“History is everything,” he said. “If we don’t learn history, there’s no future.”
What’s next for that exhibition on President’s House and Slavery?
For now, the exhibition at the president’s house remains the same. Still, the Coard remains vigilant, with ATAC planning protests, strategic sessions and awareness campaigns. He praises the public support for the exhibition.
If the exhibition faces scrutiny and calls for change, Coard said ATAC has plans to include real estate lawyers, conservators, architects and activists. The plan includes a legal injunction and pressure on political leaders both locally and nationwide.
“If you really don’t know America, you can’t become a patriotic American,” he said. “And to love America, you need to know the good, bad, ugh.”
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