Right now, the story of nine real people is being erased from one of America's most visited historic sites — and it's happening just days before the nation's 250th birthday.

The President's House in Philadelphia is where George Washington lived while serving as the country's first president. It is also where nine enslaved people — Ona Judge, Hercules, and seven others — lived and worked. Their names are known. Their stories are documented. For years, a publicly funded exhibit at Independence Mall told that history in full, with panels that helped visitors understand not just the triumphs of the founding era, but its contradictions.

The Trump administration has moved to replace those panels with new ones that include fewer references to the enslaved people and place less emphasis on Washington's role as an enslaver. A federal appeals court has since cleared the way for those changes, ruling that the city of Philadelphia has no authority over exhibit content at federally owned sites.

History does not belong to whoever holds power in Washington at any given moment. The exhibit panels that stood at the President's House for decades were built on historical record, not ideology. Removing or diluting them is not a correction — it is a revision.

Millions of people will visit Independence Mall this July 4th. They deserve to see the full story of what happened there: the founding ideals that shaped a nation and the enslaved people who were denied those ideals in the very same building. Honoring both truths is not divisive — it is honest.

We call on the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior to restore the original exhibit panels at the President's House Site in full.

Image by Kreuz und quer, CC0