Federal Officials use Crowbars to Destroy an NPS Exhibit About George Washington and Slavery

While Philadelphia prepares to welcome 1.5 million visitors celebrating American freedom, the stories of the people who made that freedom possible are being stripped from the walls.

Last week, National Park Service workers took crowbars to the President’s House exhibit on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, ripping away panels that told the stories of nine enslaved people held by George Washington during his presidency.

The site where Washington lived while leading a nation supposedly founded on liberty — a site where enslaved Black men, women, and children cooked his meals, cleaned his home, and served his guests — just had its history physically torn from the walls.

Blank walls at the site of the exhibit (from NYTimes)

The exhibit, which opened in 2010 after years of organizing by historians and community advocates, told stories most Americans never learn. Stories like Oney Judge, an enslaved woman who served Martha Washington and escaped to New Hampshire in 1796 because she wanted more than the “liberty” her enslavers preached about. Or Hercules Posey, Washington’s personal chef, who cooked America’s first state dinners and then fled enslavement himself.

Gone. Stripped away under an executive order calling for the removal of materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

It’s not disparagement to say George Washington owned human beings. That’s a fact.

George Washington and the Africans he enslaved

The city of Philadelphia expects 1.5 million visitors this summer for America’s 250th anniversary, but as of now, those visitors will see blank walls where truth once stood.

But here’s what hit me hardest about this story.

I was recently at Mount Vernon — George Washington’s estate — for the premiere of Ken Burns’ The American Revolution documentary. While I was there, I learned about a man named Harry Washington.

Ken Burns and I at George Washington’s estate

Harry was born in the Senegambia region of Africa. Washington purchased him in 1763 and forced him to work draining the Great Dismal Swamp — sixty square miles of brutal labor. Later, Harry was moved to Mount Vernon, where enslaved people survived on rations of cornmeal and salted fish that they had to harvest themselves. One visitor in 1798 recorded that each enslaved person received roughly one quart of maize per day (children got half that) along with twenty herrings per month. When overseers reported that people on the plantation sometimes went entire days without eating, Washington reluctantly increased rations only slightly.

And it gets worse.

In 1784, Washington’s own financial ledger records a payment of 6 pounds and 2 shillings to “Negroes for 9 Teeth,” purchased from enslaved people at Mount Vernon on behalf of a French dentist. George Washington participated in buying teeth from the mouths of people he held in bondage.

Harry Washington escaped. He fled to the British during the Revolution, joined what was called the Ethiopian Regiment, served as a corporal with the Black Pioneers, and eventually made it to Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone, where an exile community elected him their leader. He spent his entire life fighting for the freedom that Washington only talked about.

That story? It’s the kind of story that exhibits in Philadelphia were built to tell.

And it’s exactly the kind of story they’re trying to erase.

This is why the work I do matters. And this is why I need your help to keep doing it.

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Every article I write, every hidden history I uncover, every lie I challenge, it all comes at a cost. And right now, independent Black history creators like me are more essential than ever. Because when the government is literally taking crowbars to our history, the people telling these stories need to be resourced to keep going.

📖 At 5% paid subscribers: I can bring on researchers and historians to go deeper on stories like Harry Washington’s.

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This isn’t charity. This is an investment in the truth, at the exact moment powerful people are spending millions to destroy it.

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Sources

1. Harris, William J. “Harry Washington.” Adapted by Briona Jones and Steven J. Niven. Enslaved.org. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://enslaved.org/stories/harry-washington.

2. Langfitt, Frank. “National Park Service Dismantles Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia.” NPR, January 25, 2026.

3. Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. “George Washington and Teeth from Enslaved People.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://www.mountvernon.org

4. Russell-Sluchansky, Carmen. “Philly President’s House Battle: City Seeks to Block Attempt to ‘Whitewash Our History’ after Slavery Panels Were Removed from Independence Mall.” WHYY, January 28, 2026.

5. Schwartz, Mattathias, and Maxine Joselow. “Judge Weighs Trump’s Removal of Slavery Markers from George Washington’s House.” New York Times, January 30, 2026.