A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore displays discussing slavery at a site in Philadelphia where George Washington lived as president.
In a 40-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania compared the displays’ removal last month to the government mind-control employed in George Orwell’s famous novel “1984.”
“The government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control. Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother’s domain in Orwell’s 1984,” Rufe wrote.
Rufe’s ruling — issued on Presidents’ Day — granted an immediate injunction, requiring the reinstallation of 34 educational panels removed last month by the National Park Service from a site at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.
The materials, which include video, are part of the exhibit at the President’s House Site, the location of the residence where Washington lived for most of his presidency and where President John Adams lived until the White House was ready in 1800. Some of the material tells of Oney Judge, a woman enslaved by Washington who escaped to freedom and built a life in New Hampshire.
The removal was connected to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14253 — “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” — which calls for eliminating “divisive narratives” from national sites. Many museums and historic locations have responded by removing exhibits that discuss slavery and the challenges overcome by minorities and marginalized groups.
Appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, Rufe criticized the Trump administration as asserting that “truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power.”
The city of Philadelphia had filed suit to challenge the removals and prevent the federal government from further altering the site. Rufe ordered the objects returned immediately even as she continues to hear the full case.
The city, the White House and the National Park Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While Rufe suggested in her ruling that the federal government’s actions violated cooperative agreements with the city and the state, she also criticized the notion that the subject matter — the history of slavery — is contingent on the changing preferences of elected officials.
The administration argued during an earlier court hearing that “although many people feel strongly about this one way, other people may disagree or feel strongly another way,” and that the government “gets to choose the message it wants to convey,” Rufe wrote.
But she countered in her ruling that the “removed displays were not mere decorations to be taken down and redisplayed.” Instead, they were “a memorial” to enslaved men, women and children, “a tribute to their struggle for freedom, and an enduring reminder of the inherent contradictions emanating from this country’s founding.”
Those contradictions included the fact that Washington, who fought for America’s liberty from Britain, rotated his enslaved servants back and forth to Virginia so they would not automatically gain freedom in Pennsylvania, Rufe noted.
“Each person who visits the President’s House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery,” she wrote, “receives a false account of this country’s history.”
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