A federal judge has given the Trump administration until Friday to reinstate a slavery exhibit torn down from a Philadelphia national park as part of the administration’s effort to elevate “uplifting” narratives of U.S. history.
Following her blistering rebuke of the National Park Service for censoring historic content earlier this week, Senior Judge Cynthia Rufe of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Wednesday said the exhibits at Independence National Historical Park must be put back by the end of the week.
Rufe agreed with the city of Philadelphia, which had filed the lawsuit, that the exhibits should be restored pending her final ruling.
The Trump administration appealed the reinstatement Wednesday, arguing the federal government would “face significant and irreparable harm” if the exhibit were reinstated because that would infringe on the federal government’s authority to oversee the park service.
“That authority does not contemplate the City’s involvement as a backseat driver holding veto power, and this intrusion qualifies as irreparable harm,” the government wrote in its court filing.
The removed exhibit explored the lives of enslaved servants whom George Washington and his family brought to Philadelphia during his presidency when the city served as the nation’s capital. Panels noted that Washington purposely avoided Pennsylvania’s abolition law, which granted eventual freedom to enslaved people living in the state, by rotating his slaves out of the state. It also told the story of a 22-year-old woman who escaped to freedom from the household.
The National Park Service removed the slavery exhibits last month pursuant to a May order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to purge parks of content disparaging historic Americans. Burgum’s mandate followed an earlier order by President Donald Trump titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that called out Independence Park by name as having been subject to a “corrosive” perspective on U.S. history.
Philadelphia sued the park service, saying the agency should have first consulted with the city, which helped create the exhibit at the site of the Washingtons’ former residence.
The Interior Department earlier this week said the judge’s order was “unnecessary” because “updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days.”
