Federal officials under President Donald Trump removed educational displays about slavery from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on Thursday, setting off a wave of anger and disbelief.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the exhibits were taken down at the President’s House site — the former residence of George Washington when Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital. The displays commemorated nine people Washington enslaved while living at that location, and were meant to document what happened there and why it matters.
The report noted that more than a dozen panels were removed, including exhibits titled “Life Under Slavery” and “The Dirty Business of Slavery.” The action comes as the Trump administration pushes agencies to scrutinize displays in national parks that officials believe “inappropriately disparage” the United States — language tied to a broader directive aimed at re-framing how the country’s past is presented at public sites.
The Philadelphia Inquirer described the removal in detail, reporting that around 3 p.m. Thursday, an Independence Park employee — who declined to provide his name — told a reporter his supervisor had instructed him to take down all of the exhibits earlier that day. According to the report, three other individuals later joined him, and the final panel was removed by 4:30 p.m., before the displays were loaded into the back of a white Park Service pickup truck. The employee, the report said, repeatedly stated, “I’m just following my orders,” without confirming whether the executive order was the reason for the takedown.
Onlookers reportedly confronted the scene as the exhibits disappeared. One passerby, 47-year-old Jack Williams, called the removals “absolutely sickening,” telling the outlet that if Park Service officials had any spine, they would have refused to carry out the directive. Michael Coard of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition condemned the move even more bluntly, saying, “It’s a disgrace, and that’s an understatement,” adding that what was happening was “absolutely unheard of in the history of the United States of America.”
The report also pointed to similar removals in the past year, describing earlier orders to take down memorials and displays focused on slavery and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans — including a well-known image showing whipping scars at a site in Georgia — as part of a push to present a more positive version of American history at national landmarks.
Trump has also moved aggressively against diversity-related policies across the federal government, with measures so strict that they previously led the Pentagon to suspend observances tied to Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month last year.
