In the near future, we will be introducing a resolution condemning the Trump Administration and the Secretary of the Interior for dismantling the memorial “President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” on Independence Mall.  

 

In 2010, a group of Black historians, intellectuals, designers, activists, and community leaders helped produce the exhibit that commemorated the lives of the nine Black men and women—Oney Judge, Christopher Steels, Hercules, Austin, Paris, Richmond, Giles, Moll, and Joe—enslaved by President George Washington at the site of the President’s House at 6th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.  

 

These plaques told the history of the site, drawing attention not only to the lives of enslaved people, but to the history of slavery in the creation of this country. This is a story central to any telling of the history of our Republic, and it is central to the lives of many of this country’s founders. There were—and are—few places in the historic district of Philadelphia where such stories are told.  

 

To show the paradox of a country founded on the ideal of liberty that denied the fruits of liberty to those it captured in Africa and enslaved in the United States is not, as alleged by the Trump Administration’s executive order, to “disparage Americans past or living,” but simply to give an honest accounting of American history.  

 

As we commemorate this year the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—a document that testifies to the importance of rights that, well after the establishment of the United States, millions of Americans did not enjoy—it is important not to hide from our history.  

 

For this reason, we ask our colleagues to join us in cosponsoring this resolution and condemning the removal of the memorial and exhibit related to slavery at the President’s House, whose purpose was to tell the truth.