The city of Philadelphia\u00a0sued in January<\/a>\u00a0after the National Park Service removed the explanatory panels from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n The removal came in response to a Trump\u00a0executive order<\/a>\u00a0\u201crestoring truth and sanity to American history\u201d at the nation\u2019s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the Interior Department to ensure those sites do not display elements that \u201cinappropriately disparage Americans past or living.\u201d<\/p>\n FILE \u2013 People walk past an informational panel at President\u2019s House Site Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo\/Matt Rourke, File)\n<\/p>\n FILE \u2013 Demonstrators gather to protest removal of explanatory panels that were part of an exhibit on slavery at the President\u2019s House Site in Philadelphia, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo\/Matt Rourke, file)\n<\/p>\n FILE \u2013 A person views posted signs on the locations of the now removed explanatory panels that were part of an exhibit on slavery at President\u2019s House Site in Philadelphia, Jan. 23, 2026. (AP Photo\/Matt Rourke, file)\n<\/p>\n Show Caption<\/p>\n 1 of 3<\/p>\n FILE \u2013 People walk past an informational panel at President\u2019s House Site Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo\/Matt Rourke, File)\n<\/p>\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials must be restored in their original condition while a lawsuit challenging the removal\u2019s legality plays out. She prohibited Trump officials from installing replacements that explain the history differently.<\/p>\n Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, began her written order with a quote from George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel \u201c1984\u201d and compared the Trump administration to the book\u2019s totalitarian regime called the Ministry of Truth, which revised historical records to align with its own narrative.<\/p>\n \u201cAs if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell\u2019s 1984 now existed, with its motto \u2018Ignorance is Strength,\u2019 this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims \u2014 to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,\u201d Rufe wrote. \u201cIt does not.\u201d<\/p>\n She had warned Justice Department lawyers during a January hearing that they were making \u201cdangerous\u201d and \u201chorrifying\u201d statements when they said Trump officials can choose which parts of U.S. history to display at National Park Service sites.<\/p>\n The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, which came while government offices were closed for the federal holiday.<\/p>\n The judge did not provide a timeline for when the exhibit must be restored. Federal officials can appeal the ruling.<\/p>\n The historical site is among several where the administration has quietly removed content about the history of enslaved people, LGBTQ+ people and Native Americans.<\/p>\n Signage that has disappeared from Grand Canyon National Park said settlers pushed Native American tribes \u201coff their land\u201d for the park to be established and \u201cexploited\u201d the landscape for mining and grazing.<\/p>\n Last week, a\u00a0rainbow flag was taken down<\/a>\u00a0at the Stonewall National Monument, where bar patrons rebelled against a police raid and catalyzed\u00a0the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement<\/a>. The administration has also removed references to transgender people from its webpage about the monument, despite several trans women of color being key figures in the uprising.<\/p>\n The Philadelphia exhibit, created two decades ago in a partnership between the city and federal officials, included biographical details about each of the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the home, including two who escaped.<\/p>\n Among them was Oney Judge, who was born into slavery at the family\u2019s plantation in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and later escaped from their Philadelphia house in 1796. Judge fled north to New Hampshire, a free state, while Washington had her declared a fugitive and published advertisements seeking her return.<\/p>\n Because Judge had escaped from the Philadelphia house, the park service in 2022 supported the site\u2019s inclusion in a national network of Underground Railroad sites where they would teach about abolitionists and escaped slaves. Rufe noted that materials about Judge were among those removed, which she said \u201cconceals crucial information linking the site to the Network to Freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Only the names of Judge and the other eight enslaved people \u2014 Austin, Paris, Hercules, Richmond, Giles, Moll and Joe, who each had a single name, and Christopher Sheels \u2014 remained engraved in a cement wall after park service employees took a crowbar to the plaques on Jan. 22.<\/p>\n Hercules also escaped in 1797 after he was brought to Mount Vernon, where the Washingtons had many other slaves. He reached New York City despite being declared a fugitive slave and lived under the name Hercules Posey.<\/p>\n Several local politicians and Black community leaders celebrated the ruling, which came while many were out rallying at the site for its restoration.<\/p>\n State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia Democrat, said the community prevailed against an attempt by the Trump administration to \u201cwhitewash our history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPhiladelphians fought back, and I could not be more proud of how we stood together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM An exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at his former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,54980,54979],"class_list":["post-115657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-trump-takes-down-slavery-exhibit","tag-washington-slavery-exhibit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Slavery_Exhibit_Removed_40791.jpg\"\/)
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