Philly’s George Washington Slavery Exhibit Replaced With Whitewashed Rendition Of Black History

In case anyone was wondering, President Donald Trump is still busy hiding Black history from fragile white feelings by purging it from federally controlled parks and museums, and replacing it with history that includes Black people, but is diluted for brittle Caucasian sensibilities.

Back in January, the National Park Service began removing a slavery memorial at the President’s House in Philadelphia in compliance with Trump’s executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” though it should have been titled, “Restoring White People’s Right To Stick Their Heads In The Sand and Pretend America Is A Noble Nation.” (It’s a working title. We could replace “sand” with “Klan hood,” but that might be too on the nose.) The exhibit, which opened in 2010, honored the lives of the nine enslaved people held there who were owned as property by President George Washington.

In February, a federal judge ordered the administration to restore the exhibit and remove panels it began installing to replace it, which the administration claimed provided historical context regarding the slave trade and the U.S.’s first president being a slave owner literally until his dying day. Well, according to the Associated Press, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit of Appeals reversed that earlier this month and said Trump’s whitewashed version of the exhibit could resume installation.

From AP:

The three-judge panel praised the plans for the replacement installation, writing that they were “full of historical context,” despite objections from historians and city officials that the content appears whitewashed.

The Interior Department told The Associated Press in a statement Wednesday that the new “panels are full of historical context and highlight the momentous events that took place in the President’s House and the other sites at Independence National Historical Park.”

“They acknowledge the evils of slavery, including its injustices and hypocrisies, and, by telling the stories of the nine slaves that Washington kept in the President’s House, remind us of their essential humanity,” the statement said.

A government website with images of the new panels showed they would still have information on enslaved people who lived in the home. It would also include details on the abolitionist movement, how the Constitution treated slavery, the end of slavery in Pennsylvania and how Washington and his successor, John Adams, viewed and treated slavery, as well as information about the 20th century Civil Rights Movement.

However, the replacement panels do not include some of the detail in the earlier ones, such as a map of slave trade routes and a timeline on slavery. They also avoid critical headlines such as “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”

At the end of the day, it’s not like Trump decided to change the exhibit after people complained. No one accused the park of displaying historically inaccurate information, or anything that would constitute what the Trump administration has dubbed “improper ideology.”

As I wrote in our previous report: “Since the start of Trump’s abysmal second term, his administration has vowed to restore all honors, fort names, and monuments to the Confederacy, while forcing African American history museums to remove exhibits related to slavery and the civil rights movement, having his white attorneys decide how much Black history is too much Black history, and pushing right-wing curricula that white washes American history to omit anti-Black oppression, or spin it into a wrong that America worked tirelessly to right. Either way, the goal is and has always been to prioritize white feelings over Black historical truth.”

And that’s still all that is going on here, and that’s the reason Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker thinks federal workers waited until the dead of night to work on the new exhibit.

“Overnight, under the cover of darkness, the federal government removed panels at the President’s House that told a thorough history of Philadelphia,” Parker said in a statement. “It was allowed to do this by the decision of the federal court, but that it did so at night shows it understands this action is shameful, that it violates community trust.”

Unfortunately, we’re not dealing with an administration that knows shame. It’s a white nationalist regime that denies systemic racism while blatantly perpetuating it.

SEE ALSO:

New Lawsuit Filed Over Removal Of Exhibits At National Parks

Trump Administration Doesn’t Want Us To Remember That George Washington Enslaved Black People

Judge: Trump Administration Must Restore Slavery Exhibit In Philadelphia