www.silverguide.site –

On an overcast day, Tiffany Cooper, a visitor, snapped a photo of a panel about an enslaved woman at the President’s House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The remainder of the brick wall was blank, with bolts serving as the only reminder of the other panels that once stood there.

As a Black woman, Cooper said that she felt a deep sadness at the “incompleteness” of the exhibit. It once detailed the lives of nine enslaved Africans who served George Washington when Philadelphia was the US capitol in the 1790s.

Over the past six months, the enslavement memorial at the site where Washington and John Adams lived has taken center stage in a fight between Donald Trump and the city of Philadelphia. At the heart of the dispute are 34 panels, which were removed by the National Park Service (NPS) on 22 January 2026 and about half of them are now in storage.

The federal government said the exhibit disparaged historical American figures, while the city and activists argue that it told the full story of the US’s founding.

Cooper, a yoga instructor from Bucks county, Pennsylvania, said that it was important for her to witness the changes at the President’s House.

“We’ll only have one 250th anniversary in this country, and I feel like it’s been tainted by all the things that are going on,” she said. “The Voting Rights Act has been gutted, and these panels have been removed. It’s really painful.”

NPS’s removal of the panels and videos followed an executive order issued by Trump on 27 March 2025 titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. The site has been embroiled in litigation ever since, beginning with the city of Philadelphia’s lawsuit against the federal government. Judge Cynthia M Rufe ordered the government to restore the exhibit on 16 February, leading NPS to reinstate about half of the interpretive panels. The federal government appealed to the US third circuit, which ruled on 18 June that the Trump administration can replace the exhibit. On 3 July, a three-judge panel said that the Trump administration could install new panels, which activists and historians argue whitewashes history. Shortly after, the city filed an appeal and a motion for a stay.

Philadelphians are fighting to retain their history by holding rallies, signing a petition and reading off the text of the original panels in front of the President’s House.

“We encourage the city of Philadelphia to focus on getting their jobless rates down and ending their reckless cashless bail policy,” a Department of Interior spokesperson said in a statement to the Guardian in February 2026. “Instead of filing frivolous lawsuits in the hopes of demeaning our brave founding fathers who set the brilliant road map for the greatest country in the world – the United States of America.”

Philadelphia attorney Michael Coard said the battle has provided publicity for the site, which has received more visitors in recent months. In 2002, Coard founded Avenging the Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) to petition NPS and the city of Philadelphia to build the enslavement memorial, which opened to the public in 2010.

“I have to thank President Trump because he poked the bear,” Coard said. “As soon as he threatened to shut it down … we’ve actually created an alliance that I know we could not have put together had it not been for Trump attacking the site.”

A Black man born and raised in Philadelphia, Coard didn’t learn that enslaved Africans lived at the President’s House until a historian publicized the archaeological discovery of the enslavement quarters in 2002. Coard and other Black activists launched ATAC to commemorate the enslaved people at the site. They wrote letters to Black elected officials throughout the nation, convened historians and preservationists and held protests until the site opened eight years later.

“We were ecstatic,” Coard said. “Everything was great until it wasn’t.”

In early February 2026, a federal judge allowed Coard and other attorneys to visit the panels where they were stored at a secret location in Philadelphia. Coard said that the panels sat unprotected on a concrete floor in a large structure that he likened to “Uncle Joe’s garage.”

In recent months, ATAC has joined the city’s litigation against the Trump administration, and hosted a “Black Independence Day” to honor the enslaved Africans outside of the President’s House on 4 July. The coalition also hosts monthly Zoom meetings, which Coard said has recently ballooned to 400 participants.

Alyssa Bigbee, an artist and activist, who founded Rebel Movement Arts, has joined ATAC’s monthly Zoom meetings and in-person protests since she learned about the removal in January. As a Black woman from Philadelphia, it’s important for her to protect the city’s history. Her 10-year-old son is part of the motivation for her activism.

“I do not want him to get older one day and say, ‘Oh, they really took the panels down, what did you do?’ and it’s like I did nothing,” Bigbee said. “I want him to understand too … that this is what we’ve always done. This is what I want you to do. When something you feel passionate about is wrong, you stand up. You do what you can in whatever capacity that you can.”

Since the dispute began, the Lest We Forget Museum of Slavery, which features enslavement artifacts including chains, has seen an increase in visitors. One of the panels that was removed featured a photo of a shackle that resides in the museum.

“I was very disturbed by [the removal], because the President’s House represents a period of American history, and I always remind people that this is American history, not Black history,” said Gwen Ragsdale, the museum’s executive director. “When you talk about slavery, it’s American history.”

Matt Hall, a Temple University professor, founded the volunteer group Old City Remembers to ensure that President’s House visitors continue to see the original panels’ text. In February, he enlisted his husband and church community to help him read the text aloud to passersby at the site. Now, more than 100 volunteers altogether have stood at the President’s House with a packet of information about the removed exhibit nearly everyday.

He was inspired to create the grassroots group after witnessing protesters in Minnesota resisting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “I have benefited a lot from the white privilege that I’ve had, that my ancestors have had for all the time that we’ve been in this country,” Hall said. “This felt like something that I could do to give back and to express solidarity with people who have not always had a voice and whose voice right now is quite literally trying to be taken away.”

On Tuesday, 7 July, Barbara Silzle, an Old City Remembers volunteer, stood at the site with a green binder in her hand. The retired arts administrator from Landsdowne, Pennsylvania, wanted to get involved to counteract the sugarcoating of history.

“Philly doesn’t mess, so I think eventually we’ll reclaim this history, once we’re not living in [Trump’s] dictatorship. So he can go ahead and put up his panels,” she said as she opened up her binder. “We know the truth.”