WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the nation honors and recognizes Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the US, advocacy groups are highlighting the Administration’s attempts to alter or remove historical exhibits regarding slavery, racial injustice and civil rights. A recent court ruling is giving the Trump Administration the green light to replace a slavery exhibit at a popular Philadelphia site.
On Thursday, an unanimous appeals court panel ruled Philadelphia lacks the authority to control exhibits at the Independence Mall site, which clears the way for the Trump Administration to replace the slavery exhibit they removed at the President’s House site on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.
This latest decision overrides a February injection that orders the National Park Service to restore the site which displayed illustrated panels about the nine people enslaved by George Washington at the executive mansion while he was president.
This is just one example of a months-long campaign to push back against the President’s executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” which called for the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living”.
“There was a consistent theme of erasure of Black history, of injustice,” said Cathy Albisa of the executive orders. Albisa is the co-executive director of Branch-4, which works with federal workers and advocates towards a democratic and equitable administrative branch of government. “It was literally a whitewashing and national parks became one target.”
Branch-4 and the Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute, share they are alarmed by the President’s executive orders.
“We know of at least 45 exhibits that have been altered or removed,” said Kendra Hughes with the CAP. “A lot of those sites pertain to Black Americans, indigenous Americans, they even tried to attack Stonewall and tried to take down the pride flag there. That includes removing names from historical figures from websites, official federal websites. It just really includes trying to whitewash and sanitize our history and not talk about any of the hard parts.”
They said it’s dangerous for people to not be given the full picture of our past at these historic sites and monuments.
“A democracy cannot make fully informed decisions if it does not understand its own history,” said Albisa.
