The Trump admin asked visitors to report ‘negative’ displays at national parks. Few in Philly did.

The Department of the Interior is soliciting members of the public to identify and report content at Independence National Historical Park that they believe shows the United States in a “negative” light as President Donald Trump’s administration takes steps to review or remove materials key to understanding the history of race in America.

The Trump administration is currently considering whether to remove displays addressing the history of slavery at INHP after they were flagged by employees during a review prompted by a Trump executive order.

Without them, the walls at Independence Hall would look a lot different.

On entering the INHP campus on Market Street, “The House & the People Who Worked & Lived In It” is the first signage visitors are greeted with, on the east wall of the President’s House Site, where Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived. It provides a “brief timeline of freedom and slavery at this site.”

“These sites are important because it illustrates that Black people have been in the city since its founding. The Black history of Philly is actually older than Philadelphia itself,” said South Philly resident Mijuel Johnson, a community organizer who leads the Black Journey: African American History Walking Tour with stops in Society Hill and at Independence Hall.

“The earliest Black people arrived just two years after the city was founded in 1682. But there is presence of African people in the greater Philadelphia area as far back as 1639.”

Laminated paper signs displaying a QR code, which leads to an online feedback form, and a short paragraph of instructions are stationed across INHP sites, including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

They encourage the public to submit feedback on areas around the park that need repairs or service improvements, and also ask for comments on “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Trump’s executive order, issued in March, calls for, among other things, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to ensure all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, and other properties “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)” and instead promote American “greatness” and “progress.”

Burgum issued a directive in May outlining plans for carrying out Trump’s order and calling for “encouraging public participation” through signage “in as many locations within each property as necessary and appropriate to ensure public awareness.” It also provides the language for the QR code signs.

Independence Hall is where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were debated and signed, and is considered the birthplace of American democracy. Millions of visitors come to see the INHP sites, which also include the Liberty Bell and the President’s House Site.

Spokespeople for the Interior Department and the National Park Service’s Office of Public Affairs said in a statement that Trump’s executive order “reinforces our commitment to telling the full and accurate story of our nation’s past.”

They added that public submissions closed on July 18, but signs were still up for use at Independence and the Liberty Bell as of Friday morning and the most recent visitor submission was from July 21.

But at INHP, Trump administration officials are not getting as much help from the public as they might want.

Only 13 comments were received via the QR codes at INHP between June 13 and July 21, according to a database of public comments submitted via the code, obtained and reviewed by The Inquirer.

None of the comments contained complaints about the content of the sites at Independence; in fact, several submissions were highly complimentary of the tour and employees.

“What upset me the most about the museum — more than anything in the actual exhibits — were the signs telling people to report anything they thought was negative about Americans. That isn’t just frustrating, it’s outrageous," one person wrote. “It felt like an open invitation to police and attack historians for simply doing their jobs: telling the truth.”

Johnson, who leads tours of 50 to 100 people from across the world every week, said he had not seen any of his clients scan the code.

If the signs are removed, Johnson said, “we stand to lose the full perspective of the history of Philadelphia.”

“What defines American greatness is the values that it espouses,” he said, “but also the understanding that it has not always fully lived up to its ideals.”

If the truth “winds up making America look bad,” he said, “well, it’s because America did some bad things.”

Visitors at INHP were deeply unhappy with the prospect that materials could be censored.

Pennsauken resident Nancy Sullivan, a frequent visitor to the park, said she finds the review process “appalling.”

On Friday, she was visiting the President’s House Site to take pictures, in case the exhibit panels are taken down. She says the history of slavery is “not something that can be erased.”

“We know these things existed,” she said. “It doesn’t mean we’re not a great country.”

The Park Service can always do better at teaching more about Black and Indigenous history and women’s history (the President’s House Site was dedicated only in 2010), Johnson said, “but the underlying intentions of this administration is not to teach history, not to teach it better, but to whitewash it, literally and figuratively.”

On Thursday, father and son Colin and Colin Martin, visiting from Seattle, had stopped by Independence Hall on their way to Cooperstown, N.Y., to see, as the older Martin said, “where everything was created in the United States.”

He thought taking down exhibits would be a “horrible idea.”

“Suppressing history has never been good,” his son, a recent college graduate, added.

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat who represents the area that includes INHP, said in a statement that “rather than censoring America’s history, the administration should be giving INHP the support it needs to showcase our nation’s story and ideals, especially during our upcoming 250th anniversary.”

Visitors at other national parks in the region are also weighing in.

At Valley Forge, 10 comments were received and only one — having to do with speculation surrounding the sexuality of Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who helped transform and professionalize the American Army in the 1770s — was focused on the content of the exhibits. An internal comment from the park’s staff says it “will counsel staff on appropriate times to discuss.”

Gettysburg National Military Park, the site of the crucial battle of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s famous address, had 25 submissions from visitors.

Several of them were from members of the public who want Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and his army to be labeled as traitors. A park employee noted in the internal database on two of these comments that “Use of the term ‘traitor’ may be considered inappropriately disparaging towards a group in violation of [Burgum’s order]” and that “Use of the term ‘traitor’ to describe General Lee may be considered inappropriately disparaging towards an individual. This is an oversimplification of difficult decisions made by leaders during the Civil War.”

Lee was indicted for treason by a federal grand jury weeks after the Civil War’s end, though the case ultimately did not go to trial as President Andrew Johnson’s administration prioritized national reconciliation after the war.

Gettysburg staff also “flagged for review” a monument that park staff says “glorifies” the “Lost Cause” myth, which romanticizes the Confederacy and downplays the role of slavery in the Civil War.

Spokespeople for the Interior Department and the National Park Service’s Office of Public Affairs said, in an identical statement, that each piece of public feedback is being reviewed and evaluated manually before being referred to a subject matter expert.

“This deliberate process helps ensure that the input we act upon is both relevant and credible,” the statement read.

Back in Philadelphia, Ed Welch, president of Local 2058 of the American Federation of Government Employees, who represents workers at the National Park Service in Philadelphia, including IHNP, said he sees “this as a not-so-veiled solicitation to garner negative comments about every park in the nation.”

“These barcodes are a dog whistle,” he added.

Staff writer Ariana Perez-Castells contributed to this article.