More than a dozen slavery displays in Philly, including at Washington’s former home, have been flagged for a Trump admin review

More than a dozen displays at Independence National Historical Park that share historical information about slavery during the founding of United States have been flagged for a content review in connection with an executive order from President Donald Trump.

Materials within the President’s House Site, the Benjamin Franklin Museum, the Second Bank, Independence Hall, an outdoor wayside exhibit panel on Independence Mall, and a proposed redesigned exhibit, will be evaluated by the National Park Service for containing information that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living,” according to internal comments, obtained and reviewed by The Inquirer, from one or more employees tasked with evaluating Independence Park’s exhibits.

This review comes ahead of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States next year when Independence Park and its historically vital exhibits will be at the center of the national stage.

The President’s House Site, where Presidents George Washington and John Adams once lived, came under particular scrutiny with six exhibits flagged for review. The exhibit focuses on the contradictory coexistence of liberty and slavery during the founding of America and memorializes the people Washington enslaved.

For instance, park staff commented on a display titled “Life Under Slavery,” flagging that it “speaks of whipping, depriving of food, clothing, and shelter; as well as beating, torturing, and raping those they enslaved.”

The internal materials offer further details into which displays at Independence Park — a sprawling 46-building monument to our nation’s history, spanning 54 acres in the heart of Old City — could be in jeopardy as the Trump administration seeks to target exhibits that provide a holistic look at the role racism played in U.S. history. The New York Times reported last week that the Trump administration would remove “inappropriate” content from national parks by Sept. 17.

“I think the most inappropriate thing you can do is erase the truth, and you certainly disparage many Americans when you erase stories of enslaved persons from our parks,” said Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a national nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

“In accordance with Secretary’s Order No. 3431... all interpretive signage is currently under review,” a spokesperson for the Interior Department said in a statement. “As we carry out this directive, we’ll be evaluating all signage in the park along with the public feedback we’ve received. This effort reinforces our commitment to telling the full and accurate story of our nation’s past. Each piece of public feedback we receive is manually reviewed and evaluated.”

“Materials related to slavery are being reviewed in the same manner as all interpretive content,” the spokesperson said.

“The following panels and illustrations may need revision if found that they are inappropriately disparaging to historical figures.”

That’s how one or more employees at Independence Park prefaced their submissions on content at the President’s House Site. The exhibit was funded by federal dollars and the city of Philadelphia.

Thirteen specific items spread across six exhibits at the site were identified for review.

This includes components of displays titled: “Life Under Slavery,” “History Lost & Found,” “The Executive Branch,” “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” “The House and the People Who Worked & Lived In It,” and an illustration with the words “An Act respecting fugitives from Justice,” in reference to Washington’s signing of the Fugitive Slave Act, according to an internal form, reviewed by The Inquirer, where employees were directed to submit their reviews.

Several pieces of flagged text reference the brutality and abuse enslaved persons experienced, according to the internal content submissions.

“The artwork depicts Washington’s hands in the foreground; one with the Fugitive Slave Act, the other with a quill signing the Act, in the background a posse of white men are depicted with clubs and guns shooting at four black men (one who has been shot in the head) presumably escaping from slavery,” a park staff comment said about a flagged illustration at the site.

“The first paragraph mentions history being both admirable and deplorable, with the President’s House being a stark focus of that definition. The second paragraph uses words ‘profoundly disturbing’ to describe Washington transporting enslaved people. It also says as the new federal government embraced the lofty concept of liberty, slavery in the President’s House mocked the pretense of liberty,” a comment on the History Lost & Found display said.

“The 4th paragraph has a sentence about the enslaved population growth and mentions births to enslaved women resulting from rape by white men and forced breeding,” said a comment regarding “The Dirty Business of Slavery” display.

At an outdoor wayside panel on Independence Mall, describing the importance of the President’s House Site, language about John Adams’ household “possibly hiring enslaved African Americans to work in the President’s house,” was marked for review.

Less than a mile away, at the Benjamin Franklin Museum, an interactive touchscreen exhibit was flagged.

The exhibit allows users to role-play as an historian to understand the evolution of Franklin’s perspective on slavery. Franklin engaged in slavery and ran advertisements for it in his newspaper, but later in his life he became a proponent of abolition.

The internal comment from park staff states that “someone who doesn’t complete the entire interactive may walk away with the impression that Franklin was only pro-slavery, without seeing his later transformation.”

And at the Second Bank, which is closed indefinitely due to staffing shortages, a text panel was flagged by an employee for failing to note that John Dickinson, one of Pennsylvania’s delegates to the Continental Congress, “struggled with being a slaveholder” and that he freed the people he enslaved in 1777.

At Independence Hall, an iPad kiosk that displays a virtual tour of the second floor was tagged for pointing out the irony of the former Pennsylvania General Assembly committee room, located right above where the Declaration of Independence was signed, being used as both the U.S. Marshal’s Office and as a hold room for “accused fugitives from slavery,” according to the internal database.

The New York Times previously reported that an exhibit panel at the Liberty Bell outlining the bell’s cross-country journey during the post-Reconstruction period was flagged. The panel “calls out the systemic and violent racism and sexism that existed at the time,” park employees said.

Items that are indicated for review will not be automatically removed. Every submission will be reviewed by National Park Service leadership and parks will receive instructions if any further action is needed by Aug. 18, according to the internal June memo from Jessica Bowron, the Park Service’s comptroller and acting director.

Trump issued an executive order in March calling for, among other things, the Interior Department to “ensure that [materials under the jurisdiction of the department] do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)” and focuses instead on “achievements” and “progress” of the American people or the “beauty” of the American landscape.

Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, whose department oversees national parks, issued a directive in May outlining how the department would carry out Trump’s order and in June the National Park Service sent an internal memo ordering park units to conduct the review by July 18.

Staff were not voluntarily chosen for this review, and there are other references to slavery in the park that were not identified for evaluation, said Jules Long, secretary of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2058, which represents Park Service employees in Philadelphia.

Union leaders are currently unaware of any disciplinary actions that could have been taken if selected employees did not participate.

There also may be more displays flagged at the park that were not provided for review to The Inquirer.

If these displays were changed, visitors to Independence Park may be missing out on “eye-opening” information that shows founding fathers, historically revered for their role in creating American democracy, were also enslavers who subscribed to a brutal institution, said Paul Steinke, the executive director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.

“To try to obscure that history is stunning to me that anyone would want to do that after all this time, after 160 years since the end of the Civil War, that we’re still arguing over whether we should take note of slavery and the evils of slavery, and what it did to the families and individuals is just not something that I would expect we’d still be even talking about,” Steinke said.

Visitors to Independence Park are guided through some of these flagged exhibits by highly experienced park rangers and guides that have “have done their homework,” said Ed Welch, president of AFGE Local 2058.

“We do not shy from telling all of American history, and American history is the good, the bad and the ugly, and it involves slavery,” Welch said.

Richard Gennetti, a national representative for AFGE District 3, which includes Pennsylvania, and a liaison to Local 2058 at Independence Park said he’s concerned about employees making subjective assessments of displays.

“I‘m not sure why the employee should be put in that position to have to make those judgments,” Gennetti said.

But people with far less historical knowledge are also being asked to weigh in. The Interior Department has attempted to enlist park visitors to identify and report anything they perceive to be negative via QR codes. Though at Independence Park, Valley Forge, and Gettysburg National Military Park, they’ve only gotten a few takers so far.

There have been past attempts during former President Joe Biden’s administration at increasing the inclusivity at Independence Park. But now with Trump at the helm it’s unclear how, or whether, such stories will ever be told.

At least one major change proposed to tell a more inclusive story at Independence Park, one that includes Native Americans, has already been met with enough resistance to shut it down. In 2024, the National Park Service withdrew a proposal to permanently remove a statue of William Penn as part of its rehabilitation of Welcome Park, in favor of a plan to incorporate stories of Native Americans, after receiving push back from both Republicans and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Other changes have also been planned for 2026, like increasing the inclusion of non-white voices surrounding the country’s founding, and it’s not clear if they’ll get implemented under the Trump administration.

“I believe that truth should be the guiding star for all historical research and always or all historical interpretation,” Gennetti said.

“And truth is not flattering. Truth is truth.”

Staff writers Frank Kummer, Evgenia Anastasakos, and Ariana Perez-Castells contributed reporting to this article.