On Friday, January 23, 2026, National Park Service employees were ordered by the Trump Administration to dismantle an exhibit at the President’s House Site, a part of Independence National Historical Park. The exhibit commemorated the nine enslaved people who lived and worked in George Washington’s home during his tenure as president in the nation’s temporary capital of Philadelphia.
The exhibit was built after years of activism by local and national groups who wanted more historical accuracy and representation for the enslaved people entwined with our nation’s past. The exhibit represents some of the worst of American history but also some of our best qualities–like the willingness to accept and be held accountable for our wrongs. And now that exhibit is gone.
Its removal was a foreseeable eventuality due to the directives published by the Trump Administration last year. In the summer of 2025, the Administration announced its plans to begin deleting from national park sites any historically accurate information that didn’t fit their revisionist, white supremacist narrative of American history. The President’s House Site was on the list of sites to be altered. We knew this was coming.
And still, when it did happen, the story incited outrage. Every major national media outlet and many smaller ones covered the exhibit’s removal. Pictures and video of the destruction flooded social media. And it’s not like there wasn’t other news that day.
That Friday much of the nation braced for a once-in-a-lifetime winter storm and a man was brutally beaten and murdered by federal ICE agents in front of cameras, and yet a story about the removal of some historical placards still made national news. And that is a testament to how much we Americans care about our history.
I wrote an essay in September of 2025 explaining the science of why we as humans can’t help but look when we’re told to look away. Essentially, we don’t like to be told what to do. It’s one of the remarkable things about humans: our stubbornness. We don’t like to be told what to do, and we certainly don’t like to be told that we don’t know what we know. This Administration is attempting to gaslight an entire nation, but people are refusing to accept the lies.
Visitors have flocked to the location of the exhibit, and many are leaving handwritten signs and messages in place of the empty panels, including the names of the nine–Ona Judge, Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, Giles, Moll, and Joe–so they won’t be forgotten.
The President’s House Site is getting more press now than it ever has. The names of the people Washington enslaved are being spoken aloud hundreds of years after his cruelty. Their memories are being embraced now more than they were before this Administration demanded they be forgotten.
And this attention is having an impact. The city of Philadelphia is now suing the Administration over the removal of the panels, and the Governor of Pennsylvania has joined the lawsuit. Public officials wouldn’t take these actions if it weren’t for the public outcry, showing that Americans have a lot more power than this Administration wants us to think.
To quote the now ubiquitous line from George Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” The Trump Administration is ordering us all to reject what we know to be true. But we, the American people, aren’t having it.
Despite all of this Administration’s attempts to falsify and redact our nation’s history, the American people seem more determined than ever to see ourselves accurately. To celebrate the good and recognize the bad. That is the only way to heal and grow as a human, and that is the only way to heal and grow as a nation.
Update 2/24/2026: In just a matter of days, the slavery exhibit has been reinstalled at the President’s House Site. The people spoke out, their elected representatives took legal action, and the Administration was forced to restore truth to the walls of the site.
If you ever feel powerless, remember that some of the most powerful people the world has ever seen have been trying for hundreds of years to erase the names and memories of these nine enslaved humans, but they continue, over and over again, to fail because people like you fight back.
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