<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/national-monuments-trump-rewrite-history-racism-indigenous-people>
"Blank spaces now exist where a series of panels about enslavement once
appeared on the walls of the President’s House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The site, which honors the home of George Washington and John Adams, is a major
landmark that bore artwork and informational signs for more than a decade. But
on 22 January, National Park Service (NPS) workers used hand tools to pry off
34 panels to comply with a presidential executive order designed to reframe the
national narrative. The panels that highlighted the lives of people enslaved by
George Washington when Philadelphia was the US capital in the 1790s are now in
storage.
The removal is one of several across the nation, as NPS staff aim to conform
with Donald Trump’s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American
History” issued on 27 March 2025. Public markers, monuments and statues that
the Trump administration considers disparaging to past or current Americans
have been flagged at more than a dozen parks. Two exhibits at Montana’s Little
Bighorn battlefield national monument that discuss Indigenous history and the
Battle of the Little Bighorn have been targeted and deemed noncompliant.
Additionally, signage about climate change at Muir Woods national monument in
California and visitor brochures at Medgar and Myrlie Evers home national
monument in Mississippi that referred to Medgar Evers’s killer as racist were
also removed.
Critics of the move say that the federal government’s action in Philadelphia
has damaged NPS’s credibility in telling the truth about history. Now, it will
be more difficult for the public to access a well-rounded accounting of the
nation’s founding, said Ed Stierli of the National Parks Conservation
Association. “The National Park Service [has] made tremendous strides in recent
decades in teaching the facts, the truth about difficult topics like slavery,”
Stierli said. “By removing this exhibit and removing signs, not just from this
exhibit, but from parks around the country, visitors are going to miss out on
the full picture of our nation’s history that deserves to be told in national
parks.”
After the panels’ removal (videos at the site were also taken down), the city
of Philadelphia filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the US
district court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania to reinstate the
exhibit. It also sought an injunction to inhibit any more damage to the site or
the panels. On 2 February, Judge Cynthia M Rufe blocked the government from
making further changes to the President’s House until further notice."
Via Janet Logan.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
