At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Trump administration took down an exhibit on the contradiction between President George Washington’s enslavement of people and the Declaration of Independence’s promise of liberty.
At Muir Woods National Monument in California, the administration dismantled a plaque about how the tallest trees on the planet could help store carbon dioxide and slow the Earth’s dangerous warming.
And at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, Trump officials ordered the National Park Service to stop showing films about the women and immigrants who once toiled in the city’s textile mills.
Across the country, Park Service workers have started taking down plaques, films and other materials in connection with a directive from President Trump to remove or rewrite content that may “disparage Americans” or promote “corrosive ideology.”
The president wants to present what he considers a more positive view of American history to millions of people who visit more than 400 national parks and historic sites each year. Critics call it whitewashing, an attempt to erase difficult periods in the nation’s past as well as contributions made by people of color, gay and transgender figures, women and other marginalized groups.
“The Park Service, for most of its 100-year history, has been a standard-bearer for telling America’s stories, and not just the happy stories,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, who led the Park Service under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. “You know, you can’t just put a happy face on slavery.”
Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Park Service, said in an email that the service was “taking action to remove or revise interpretive materials,” adding that the effort was intended to ensure “accuracy, honesty and alignment with shared national values.” She did not respond to follow-up questions about the removal of specific materials.
In some of the first legal pushback against the president’s directive, the city of Philadelphia sued the Interior Department and the Park Service on Thursday, seeking a restoration of the displays.
The complaint, filed in federal court, came after Park Service workers used crowbars to pull down plaques at the President’s House site, where Mr. Washington lived for most of his presidency and kept nine enslaved people. One of the plaques, titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” described how the trans-Atlantic slave trade had reshaped Philadelphia and upended the lives of around 12.5 million Africans who were forcibly brought to the Americas.
The lawsuit argues that the removals violated a 2006 agreement between Philadelphia and the Park Service. The agreement stipulated that the site, which opened in 2010, would “commemorate the enslaved Africans who resided in the Washington household,” and that the city could approve or reject any changes to the displays, according to the complaint.
“African American history is American history, and this is an intentional effort to erase history and whitewash,” Kenyatta Johnson, the president of the Philadelphia City Council, said in an interview.
“Slavery did exist in America, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he added. “It’s a part of our history and who we are as a country.”
On Friday morning, the names of the nine people enslaved by Mr. Washington were still engraved on a stone wall at the President’s House. But all of the plaques explaining the site appeared to be gone, and screens that had shown videos about enslaved people were switched off.
A group of women who identified themselves as local teachers taped colored papers with handwritten messages like “Learn ALL history” and “History is Real” to multiple spots where the plaques had been.
Nate Thompson, 53, said he was one of the Black activists who had led protests in the early 2000s against what they saw as the erasure of slavery at Independence National Historical Park, which also includes Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center. He called the removal of the signs “tragic” as he pointed to the Liberty Bell Center a few feet away.
“To understand the history of this place, you have to understand the people who were enslaved,” he said. “Everyone was not guaranteed liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Mr. Thompson added that the removals could not extinguish awareness of the history of slavery, especially among Black Philadelphians. “Whether institutions recognize them or not, we will continue to tell our stories,” he said.
A few feet away, at the entrance to the Liberty Bell Center, Sarah Sperry, 47, had a piece of paper taped to her shirt that said “Ona,” a reference to Ona Judge, an enslaved housemaid who escaped from the President’s House in 1796 and evaded Mr. Washington’s dogged efforts to recapture her.
Ms. Sperry, who said she was visiting from Haddon Heights, N.J., had also brought a handwritten cardboard sign that said “George Washington Was an Enslaver.” She thought the site had given “an honest picture of George Washington” before the exhibits were dismantled, she said.
A status hearing in the case challenging the removals in Philadelphia is scheduled for Monday morning. In the meantime, the Park Service is ramping up its efforts to review materials that may run afoul of Mr. Trump’s executive order, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The Park Service initially planned to start removing or rewriting all “inappropriate” content by Sept. 17, according to the documents. But after the agency blew past this self-imposed deadline, the Trump administration set a new target date of Jan. 16 for many parks, the documents show.
At Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, the Trump administration has ordered employees to stop showing films about the grueling conditions endured by mill workers in the early 19th century, including long hours and low wages, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Officials viewed these films as implicit critiques of the Gilded Age, a period that the president has idealized, the two people said.
At Muir Woods National Monument in California, visitors might notice a conspicuously blank plaque in the middle of a circular boardwalk. The plaque used to explain the science of climate change, noting that the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and that redwoods can store these planet-warming gases. Mr. Trump has called global warming a “hoax” and has pushed for increasing the nation’s production of oil, gas and coal.
In another removal related to climate change, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park took down a sign that detailed the site’s vulnerability to sea level rise. Researchers have estimated that much of the site could be underwater by the end of the century.
The changes at Independence National Historical Park, however, may be the most widely noticed. About three million people visited the park in 2023, and the Park Service, which began in 1916, is expecting large numbers to converge on the Philadelphia area this year for events commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The removal of the slavery exhibits does not erase all mentions of race from Independence National Historical Park. The Liberty Bell Center still includes an extensive discussion of Black Americans’ fight to realize the Declaration’s promise of freedom and equality.
Mattathias Schwartz contributed reporting from Philadelphia.
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
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