Tour guides and activists fight for history

It's consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story We're just a few weeks away from celebrating the nation's two hundred fiftieth birthday So I went to the city called the Birthplace of America, Philadelphia It's right here at Independence Hall that the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in seventeen seventy six. Philadelphia became the nation's first capital, George Washington, its first president. He lived a block away. For decades and decades, people have come to these few old city blocks, all cobblestone and red brick to steep themselves in this history of American freedom. But producer Henry Larson and I came because of a battle playing out right now over that history, spepecifically over whether the National Park Service, which runs these historic sites, should have to tell the stories of the black people who were part of it. We're standing here looking at this beautiful rear facade of Independence Hall and then you around And just a few steps away is the house, where George Washington, when he was president during those early years, lived. And not only where he lived, but where he enslaved nine people Austin Paris Hercules Christopher Shields, Richmond, Giles, Oy Judge. Michael Cord is reading their names, etched onto a wall at the site of Washington's house. Cord's a lawyer and an activist, and like many Philadelphians, he was stunned in the early two thousands when a local historian unearthed records that George and Martha Washington had brought nine slaves to work for them here. Many of us knew that he enslaved, but not many knew that nine were held right here in Philadelphia. So I was enraged. I put together a group of local activists, We performed it. He called it the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition. It began pressing the park Service to create an exhibit. It took years But in twenty ten it was finished. The house, long gone except for its foundations, was partially rebuilt. Panels and video screens along the walls told the stories of George Washington's nine enslaved workers. It was the grand opening of the first slave memorial of its kind on federal property in the history of the United States of America. We thought it would last forever But fifteen years later, the destruction came Last year, President Trump signed an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History ordered national parks and historic sites to remove any exhibit or display that quote appropriately disparages Americans past or living. A few months later, federal workers showed up at the slavery exhibit here at the presresident's house Pow bars There were thirty four interpretive panels to tell this whole story. They pulled all thirty four down. I felt like a part of my soul was being ripped out with each interpretive panel being ripped out becausecause this is my story At national parks and historic sites across the U S The Trump administration has for months been removing displays about slavery and other ugly chapters in U. S. history. Trump's ordder said that telling history this way deepens societal divides fosters a sense of national shame This week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the presresident's order But it's not clear what that will mean for the slavery exhibit here in Philly, which has already been partially restored because of a separate lawsuit brought by the city. A city of Philadelphia against the Secretary of U S. Department of Interior Consider this, just days before thousands of people are expected to stream into Philadelphia to celebrate the nation's two hundred fiftieth birthday, some of the exhibit at the Pident's house has been restored, but a lot is still missing Forment theyR, I'm Adrian Flida Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question What happens if we refund tariffs Why are groceries so expensive At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to zep. Follow NPR's planet money wherever you get your podcast and start seeing how the economy really works NPR's newest podcast is where you can find NPR's biggest interviews. I'm Steve Inskepe. The program is called Newsmakers. We talk with some of the most powerful and influential people at this moment. putut real questions to them and push for real answers Follow newsmakers on the NPR app or any podcast player or you can watch on NPR's YouTube channel Consider this from NPR. In Philadelphia, a historic site meant to tell the stories of black people enslaved by George Washington is at the center of a battle over history Five months ago, the Trump administration took down an exhibit at the site to get a sense of what the slavery exhibit's removal has meant. We met tour guide Reaina Yani at the house. Her shock hasn't gone away. I wasn't prepared for the full range of emotions that overcame me. and I'm still upset. I'm still angry. Seven years ago, Yani started a company called The Black Journey She gives walking tours about Philadelphia's black history. Here at President Washington's house, she always tells the story of Ona Judge who ran away, escaped to freedom. Yani gave me a bit of the tour. So you have about fifty percent of the walls as it would have had. We're walking to a wall that once held a panel information about the dirty business of slavery There are metal brackets of where the panels used to be secured to the wall. We're looking at an empty wall now. We're looking at an empty wall. It doesn't make sense without the context. There are footprints that are supposed to represent Ona Judge's triumphant escape in the ground, they're bronze, they're beautiful, but it doesn't make sense without the story. What's the significance of the names etched in granite, the footprints, It doesn't make sense When you're bringing people through this house What is the story you're trying to tell them? while you're standing right here where we're standing right now? I want them to understand that history of slavery in the United States is from the very beginning, from the very top. And I also want to tell the story of triumph that people stood up for themselves, in particular Ona Judge She emancipated herself. She was a young woman. She had no idea where she was going. She knew she would never see her family again Yancy tells me that after she learned the story of Judges's escape and the stories of the other eight enslaved workers she felt an urge to tell as many people as possible. D you ever consider after those pounds came down not doing the tours? No. I see the bllack journey as stewards of this history, and we saw how easily the history was previously lost for over a century. And I wantna make sure that that doesn't happen again How do you grapple with this paradox of slavery in the shadow of independent salult. I call it hypocrisy On the tour we share a picture of the founders. There's a famous oil painting. And it's supposed to depict the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And there are red dots on the faces of most of the founders and I always ask the visitors, well what do you think those red dots represent Of course it represents those that owned human beings When people are making that realization as you're telling them that story, What do you notice come across their faces Some people thought about it But for some people, it's the first time that that's clicked. And they realized, oh my, there are like so many levels of freedom right in this square block. And so we want to make sure that the panels tell the full story of slavery and how people did Self emancipate It was so intolerable to so many people and people resisted in so many ways In his executive order, President Trump directed the Parks Department to remove exhibits that did not emphasize American greatness What does that say to you I think own a judge's story is a prime example of American greatness self emancipating herself to create her own life, her own story, and people need to understand it so that we don't go back Just by taking the panels down, you can't make it disappear. You can't make that history go away We asked the Trump administration for an interview. The Interior Department sent us a statement saying the administration quote, is committed to celebrating and acknowledging the full breadth of our nation's history. It also ses us a link to new exhibit panels it wants to replace the ones it removed These new panels would tell some of the story of the people Washington enslaved at his Philadelphia house But they also downplay their possible suffering, suggesting they had better lives than slaves at Washington's plantation in Virginia. As we walked through the house with Reena Yansi, we noticed something. All the little acts of public rebellion On some of the walls, people had taped up handwritten explanations of why the exhibit was missing. So the signs are removed by the Department of the Interior. everyvery day, these protest signs, there's facsimiles of what used to be there printed on eight by ten paper. But every day they're taken down in the evening and every day people exercise their firstirst Amendment rights and replace them. In front of another wall, a woman named Niia Stevenson was reading aloud from a white Binder. seventeen ninety three, the Fugitive Slave Act