A slavery exhibit in Philadelphia is being restored after a judge ruled on Monday against the Trump administration’s removal of the installation.
According to Fox 29 Philadelphia, National Park Service workers were seen on Thursday (Feb. 19) reinstalling 30 panels about slavery on the historic President’s House located at Independence National Historical Park in the City Center neighborhood. The building was once home to the first president of the United States, George Washington, and the second president, John Adams.
The City of Philadelphia sued the Trump administration after the National Park Service was seen taking down the panels about slavery in January, under a directive ordered by the president that said its purpose was “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” Some of the displays removed were entitled, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” “Life Under Slavery,” and “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”
The order coming from the federal policy was immediately met with protests from residents, local organizations like the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, and city leadership.
On Monday (Feb. 16), Judge Cynthia M. Rufe ordered Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the Department of the Interior, National Park Service Acting Director Jessica Bowron, and the National Park Service to reinstate the exhibits, and that any changes made going forward must be accompanied by a “mutual written agreement” with the city of Philadelphia.
In her 40-page decison, Rufe compared the federal action to Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” and said, “As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.”
Rufe also ordered for the panels to be reinstalled by Friday, February 20, at 5 p.m. local time.
“If the President’s House is left dismembered throughout this dispute, so too is the history it recounts,” Rufe wrote in the opinion.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is appealing the decision, per the Associated Press, and asked for the restoration to be put on hold yesterday (Feb. 18) while the case continues. According to the publication, a spokesperson for the Secretary of the Interior said it had plans for an alternative exhibit, “providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall.”
