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The National Park Service has taken down an exhibit at Philadelphia's Independence Mall that highlighted President George Washington's treatment of his enslaved workers. It's part of President Trump's campaign to address anything at national parks and monuments that he says inappropriately disparage Americans past or living. NPR's Frank Langfitt reports.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Empty spaces now dot the freestanding brick walls of the President's House where historic plaques once hung. Washington lived on the site during his presidency in the 1790s. A flat-screen TV is one of the few things that remain from the outdoor exhibit. The TV ran a video of an actress playing Oney Judge. Judge was one of Washington's enslaved workers who escaped in 1796.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Oney Judge) The president and his cabinet talked about liberty. Liberty. I wanted more than that. I wanted freedom.
LANGFITT: The video also points out that Washington periodically sent his slaves out of state for strategic reasons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Oney Judge) To get around the law that said that if we stayed in Pennsylvania for six months, they'd have to let us go free.
LANGFITT: The TV is now dark and silent.
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LANGFITT: On Thursday, natural park workers used a crowbar to peel plaques from their frames. Many in Philadelphia saw this coming, but Nikil Saval, a state senator who represents the area, was still stunned.
NIKIL SAVAL: Jimmying off these panels, I mean, it was one of the most disturbing images I've seen, frankly. It was not dissimilar from a book burning. You're watching history and knowledge that people have struggled to bring to light being erased and in such a brute fashion.
LANGFITT: The city of Philadelphia has filed suit against the U.S. Department of the Interior to restore the exhibit. The removal is part of Trump's effort to counteract what he sees as a decade-long effort to rewrite the nation's history based on left-wing ideology.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we want the museums to talk about the history of our country in a fair manner, not in a woke manner or in a racist manner, which is what many of them - not all of them, but many of them - are doing. Our museums have an obligation to represent what happened in our country over the years, good and bad, but what happened over the years in an accurate way.
LANGFITT: Avenging The Ancestors Coalition, a local activist group, drove the creation of the President's House exhibit. It opened in 2010, just a short walk from the Liberty Bell. The exhibit is a memorial to the nine enslaved people who worked for Washington there. Leslie Marant owns an executive consulting firm and worked across from the site for years.
LESLIE MARANT: You don't get to the Liberty Bell without going through this site and learning about these people, and it was beautiful. And now it looks like vandalism.
LANGFITT: Not everyone in Philadelphia was a fan. Michael Lewis is a professor of art and architecture at Williams College who's written about the exhibit. Growing up in the 1960s, he says teachers portrayed Washington in the most glowing light.
MICHAEL LEWIS: This is the young boy who couldn't tell a lie. First in peace, first in the hearts of our countrymen - it was a sort of caricature, a patriotic caricature that we were meant to revere.
LANGFITT: But Lewis says the plaques only talked about Washington's failings.
LEWIS: We got an overcorrection, which gave us another cardboard figure. George Washington, the hypocrite who preached freedom but brought slaves to Philadelphia, cold-bloodedly rotating them every half year.
LANGFITT: Lewis says the solution is an exhibit that covers the nation's first president in all his complexity. The Trump administration has not said if it will edit or replace the signs or what, if anything, will come next.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF YAMI/HIKARI'S "APRICITY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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