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From 2010 until early 2026, there were 34 interpretive panels in Philadelphia\u2019s Independence National Historical Park relating the history of the families who resided at the President\u2019s House Site. <\/a>Now there are only 16. The missing panels speak to the ongoing struggle between historians and President Donald Trump over the role Black people played in the presidential administrations of George Washington and John Adams.<\/p>\n The legal history of these panels is messy. In January 2026, one year after Trump issued an executive order<\/a> centralizing his control over historical interpretation at national park sites, federal workers removed all 34 panels<\/a> from the open-air Philadelphia museum. In February 2026, a district court issued an injunction<\/a> requiring the restoration of the panels, but a circuit court paused the injunction<\/a> before the work was completed. In April 2026, the same circuit court clarified that the federal government was not to tamper<\/a> with any of the panels\u2014restored or otherwise\u2014while litigation is pending. This is how it came to pass that the President\u2019s House Site lies half-interpreted on the eve of the U.S. semiquincentennial. <\/p>\n If the how is messy, the why is more straightforward: Donald Trump does not like talking about the history of American slavery<\/a>. On the campaign trail in 2024, he denied that Washington was a slaveholder<\/a>. When federal workers reviewed the President\u2019s House Site panels for interpretations that conflicted with Trump\u2019s executive order, nearly all their comments pertained to slavery<\/a>. In short, federal workers understand that Trump does not want Philadelphia museums to discuss Washington\u2019s relationship with slavery, certainly not as part of America 250 commemorations.<\/p>\n In fact, Washington\u2019s entanglements with Pennsylvania slavery extend beyond Philadelphia. Black bondage was so ubiquitous during the first president\u2019s lifetime that it would be peculiar if this were not the case. This context is critical for understanding the tension between freedom and slavery that lies at the heart of early U.S. history. <\/p>\n George Washington\u2019s star began to rise during the French and Indian War, although it was slow going. After losing the Battle of Fort Necessity in what is now southwestern Pennsylvania in 1754, then Lt. Col. Washington petitioned the Virginia legislature for reimbursement for his loss of a \u201cvaluable servant<\/a>,\u201d an enslaved man who died of wounds he sustained in battle. Historians, including at Washington\u2019s Mount Vernon<\/a>, do not know the name of this bound veteran, only that his owner hoped to recuperate his value. <\/p>\n As a reward for his military service, Washington received preferential access to western lands. In 1768, he claimed 1,644 acres near Fort Necessity, which he called Washington\u2019s Bottom. Determined to improve the tract and thus lower his tax burden, in 1773 he relocated four people he enslaved, Nancy, London<\/a>, Duffy, and Simon<\/a>, from Virginia to Pennsylvania. He tasked the group with establishing a grist mill along a slender tributary of the Youghiogheny River now called Washington\u2019s Run. Other enslaved people followed, including carpenters<\/a>, \u201cworkeing hands<\/a>,\u201d and perhaps a third group that Washington\u2019s local overseer referred to as \u201cbreeding mairs<\/a>.\u201d It is unclear from the overseer\u2019s letter whether he was requesting horses or enslaved girls and women capable of bearing children. He acquired both, in any case, prompting his remark in 1781 that \u201cnegros and stock of every kind sems to incres fast<\/a>.\u201d Washington\u2019s Pennsylvania plantation was isolated, but a community developed there all the same.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: How the Trump administration\u2019s proposed panels would change President\u2019s House<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n We know the names of many of these laborers today because Pennsylvania enacted a program for the gradual abolition of slavery in 1780. To distinguish between the bound and the free, the legislation required enslavers to register the people they held as property. Washington\u2019s overseer registered 14 people in 1782<\/a>, six of whom were children under the age of 10. Of the original four people who Washington had sent to Pennsylvania, only Simon<\/a> appeared on this list, then 18 years old. However, we know that Nancy, at least, had also survived. A Pennsylvania enslaver noted a few years later that in 1784, \u201cNance a wench then the property of General Washington<\/a>,\u201d had given birth to twins. She named them Charity and Tom.<\/p>\n In 1786, Washington confessed his support for gradual abolition programs in the abstract<\/a> and expressed his hope that he would never have to purchase another enslaved person again. A few weeks later, he sold the people he owned in Pennsylvania<\/a> to buyers in and around Washington\u2019s Bottom after failing to convince the enslaved community to return voluntarily to Mount Vernon<\/a>. It seemed the group understood that life would be better for them in an emancipating state. Still, this was slavery. Simon was purchased by merchant brothers, Bazil and Thomas Brown. \u201cNance & Young Child\u201d became the property of a farmer named James Hammond; her other infant children, Charity and Tom, were sold away from her, claimed by Samuel Burns. In 1792, Nancy gave birth to another pair of twins, both the property of Hammond. She named the boy George<\/a>.<\/p>\n This was not the end of Washington\u2019s entanglements with northern slavery. In the summer of 1794, one of Washington\u2019s comrades from his French and Indian War days, John Neville, could do little but watch from a distance as Whiskey Rebels burned his western Pennsylvania mansion to the ground, including the slave quarters<\/a>. Neville and more than a dozen people he enslaved had been unable to turn back the tax protestors. In response, Washington took up the mantle of Commander-in-Chief, marching out of Philadelphia with militiamen intent on pacifying the countryside. In early autumn 1794, he spent a week in Carlisle provisioning his troops at the borough\u2019s barracks. While there, Washington lodged with Ephraim Blaine, a friend, quartermaster, and enslaver. Quartermaster records reveal<\/a> that enslaved teamsters, men identified only as \u201cBlaine\u2019s Negro,\u201d \u201cHunter\u2019s Negro,\u201d and \u201cMitchell\u2019s Negro,\u201d kept the barracks stocked with the oats, timber, and wheat the army needed to sustain its mission. Enslaved Pennsylvanians manned the margins of Washington\u2019s world.<\/p>\n