Civil rights lawyer Michael Coard called the new exhibit \u201cmaliciously outrageous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf George Washington had some discomfort with slavery, what do you think those 316 black men, women and children at his Mount Vernon, Virginia plantation had? What do you think the nine held illegally in Philadelphia had?\u201d he told WHYY News. \u201cSo to talk about George Washington\u2019s discomfort is offensive and outrageous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Coard was similarly incensed by another panel describing the people enslaved at the house as having \u201ca modicum of autonomy\u201d and the ability to \u201cexplore the city and sometimes even attend the theater.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you talk about a human being who has no control over his or her own body, everything about that individual legally belongs to somebody else who can buy and sell and trade you, beat you, whip you, rape you, murder you at a whim \u2014 and you\u2019re talking about a \u2018modicum of autonomy?\u2019\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
In a statement sent to WHYY News, a Department of Interior spokesperson defended the renderings saying \u201cthis administration has been committed to celebrating and acknowledging the full breadth of our nation\u2019s history.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hard work and sacrifices of the men and women who built this nation deserve to be remembered and honored,\u201d the statement said. \u201cBy telling the full story, every triumph, every challenge, and every step towards a more perfect union we strengthen our shared understanding and ensure that future generations inherit not just the land we love, but the truth of the journey that brought us here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The new renderings also go deeper into the old house\u2019s history, explaining that the widow of Philadelphia mayor William Masters had the house built in 1767, and was later occupied by Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Richard Penn, the grandson of William Penn.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis site marks the home of colonial governors, a British general, traitors, and patriots alike, and it served as the executive mansion for the first two presidents of the United States,\u201d the panel reads.\n<\/p>\n
Text on another panel says that, as the executive mansion, the house received many dignitaries, including federal officials, foreign ambassadors and \u201cmany delegations from Native American Nations,\u201d including Iroquois and Chickasaw leaders.\n<\/p>\n
Like the earlier panels, the new replacements do include some information on the nine people enslaved by Washington, including Oney Judge, the personal maidservant and seamstress of Martha Washington, who the new exhibit notes \u201cran away from the President\u2019s House and escaped to freedom in 1796.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Whereas the old site made clear that Washington rotated his servants out of Philadelphia back to his Mt. Vernon estate in Virginia so they couldn\u2019t claim freedom under Pennsylvania law, a new panel instead says he did so \u201cin acknowledgement of a Pennsylvania law requiring slaves to be set free after six months in residence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Coard said he would not approve of any of the new displays.\n<\/p>\n
None of it \u201cis acceptable because you got to consider the source,\u201d he said. \u201cThe source did this maliciously, so I accept nothing from it. Let the historians tell history.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Civil rights lawyer Michael Coard called the new exhibit \u201cmaliciously outrageous.\u201d \u201cIf George Washington had some discomfort with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,53031,724],"class_list":["post-161903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-presidents-house","tag-trump-impact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161903","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=161903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}