{"id":125602,"date":"2026-02-28T00:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T00:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/125602\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T00:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T00:27:10","slug":"philadelphia-rep-boyles-bill-aims-to-protect-u-s-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/125602\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Rep. Boyle’s bill aims to protect U.S. history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beth Hessel, executive director of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia<\/a>, a 200-year-old cultural institution that serves as a library, museum and forum for books, writers and ideas, said \u201cIt was congressional action in 1947 that said that the President\u2019s House should celebrate and commemorate the eminent personages who lived and worked in that house, which includes not just the president, but also all of those enslaved people who helped make his work possible.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Hessel added that the President\u2019s House Site is historically and culturally important.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOn my many visits to the President\u2019s House memorial exhibition, I am struck by its careful historical and archaeological documentation and the powerful symbolism of the open framework of the house, whose back door leads to what had been the President\u2019s House slave quarters and is now the entrance to the Liberty Bell Center,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

Hessel went on to explain why the exhibits are important.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cOn my many visits to the President\u2019s House Memorial Exhibition, I am struck by its careful historical and archaeological documentation and the powerful symbolism of the open framework of the house whose back door leads to what had been the President\u2019s House slave quarters and is now the entrance to the Liberty Bell Center,\u201d she said.
\n\"SlaveryPanels still missing at President\u2019s house. (Tom MacDonald\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Sean Connolly, executive director of the nearby Arch Street Meeting House, said his organization receives about 70,000 tourists a year, and they all deserve to see the unvarnished version of U.S. history.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe historic district of Philadelphia is a web of interlocking historic sites, museums and cultural institutions. The beating heart of that web is, of course, Independence National Historical Park.\n<\/p>\n

The other sites throughout the neighborhood rely on this park to share the stories of the broad American history which took place here. The good, the bad, the complicated and the straightforward. The story presented at the President\u2019s House is one such example of that American complexity, of revolution and idealism stained by the enslavement of others,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOur visitors can handle this messy-to-some, uncomfortable history, because without embracing it, how can we ever truly understand the lessons of the past? Museums across the historic district such as Arch Street Meeting House are committed to telling the complicated legacy of American history and will ensure that visitors of all colors can see themselves represented in the historic fabric of this shared American story,\u201d he explained.\n<\/p>\n

Boyle admitted he doesn\u2019t have any \u201cofficial\u201d Republican support for the bill, but he believes if the makeup of Congress changes after the midterm election, and he becomes budget chairman, there will be a change in some of the representatives who won\u2019t come out in favor of the bill now.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beth Hessel, executive director of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, a 200-year-old cultural institution that serves as a library,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,53031],"class_list":["post-125602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-presidents-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125602","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=125602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}