In this absurdly dark political time, we should celebrate the light, wherever it shines. Consider this recent legal and moral victory against the forces of darkness.
A few days ago, National Park Service employees began reinstalling explanatory panels at Independence Mall in Philadelphia, panels that had been removed at the direction of Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, pursuant to a Donald Trump executive order. The panels are located at the remains of the “President’s House,” where first George Washington and then John Adams lived from about 1790 to 1800, before the U.S. Capital was moved to D.C. They record the stories of the enslaved people owned and kept there by George and Martha Washington.
The panels had been removed because Trump and Burgum don’t care for historical knowledge that throws any embarrassing shade on the presumably pristine memories of the Founding Fathers. On February 16, Federal District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe told them, in effect: “Too bad.”
The City of Philadelphia sued Burgum and the NPS. Issuing a preliminary injunction requiring the NPS to restore the panels, Judge Rufe declared in no uncertain terms that the Trump regime has no authority to rewrite public history according to the president’s ignorant prejudices. She did so by citing a classic literary source of political defiance, George Orwell’s novel 1984.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed,” wrote Rufe, “with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims – to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.”
In plain English, Rufe ruled that the federal government does not have the authority to lie, just because Trump says so. Her 40-page opinion for the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is a breath of cleansing fresh air amidst a thick national smog of Trumpist mendacity. The attempted Philadelphia erasure – reportedly after a complaint from one disgruntled tourist – is one small incidence of a massive national project by the regime to scrub national monuments of any historical information, however accurate, that it considers insufficiently patriotic or otherwise politically objectionable.
To what did the feds object? The offending panels (34 in all, with supporting materials) focus on the particular history of nine slaves owned by Washington, whom he rotated back and forth between Philadelphia and Virginia in order to evade a Pennsylvania law that enabled slaves who had established more than six-months residence to petition for their freedom. The slaves’ true stories ran afoul of a Trump/Burgum determination to allow at national historical sites only “uplifting” historical information, and to forbid information that might “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
It’s not a secret that Washington and his wife, Martha, owned hundreds of slaves. What the censored panels do (as indeed was directed by the U.S. Congress in 2003) is provide a specific context to that history. Most importantly, they offer a glimpse of the actual lives of the nine slaves — some known only by one name – and a broader sense of how the slavery system worked in actual practice.
The Trump regime would prefer that knowledge be erased.
The Trump regime would prefer that knowledge be erased. As Judge Rufe wrote (here again quoting Orwell on “Big Brother’s” falsification of history): “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.” This is precisely the intent of the Trump/Burgum erasures: They believe if they delete history they don’t like, it will eventually be forgotten.
Certainly Washington’s reputation can survive a full and complete record of his entire life; he was hardly the only founder whose otherwise distinguished career was disfigured by the national crime of slavery (and Native American genocide). The obligation of history and memory is to recall the good and the bad alike. The Trump regime wants to whitewash and sanitize the historical record, just as it is determined to deny science, disfigure medical care, and eliminate any public ideas it considers politically inconvenient.
Their mandate for ignorance flows downhill. Down the street, at the University of Texas, the Trump-compliant Board of Regents has just directed the faculty to avoid “unnecessary and controversial subjects.” Under that standard, good luck teaching 1984. Indeed, good luck teaching any subject at all within any university worthy of the name, where controversy is necessary by definition.
The vandalism in Philadelphia is only one instance among many perpetrated by Burgum. Elsewhere across the country he has ordered similar removal of “negative” historical information, as well as any references to climate change or other environmental risks at national parks. What we don’t know … won’t hurt us, right?
Judge Rufe’s ruling is a preliminary injunction to restore the panels while the case proceeds; on Feb. 20, a higher court paused the reinstallation pending a federal appeal. It’s still possible that Trump and Burgum will prevail in mandating historical ignorance at the President’s House.
Until then, the last word should belong to Ona (“Oney”) Judge, Martha Washington’s enslaved maid, who escaped her bondage there in 1796 and eventually made her way to New Hampshire, where she remained free despite George Washington’s repeated efforts to recapture her into slavery.
Years later, Ona Judge was asked by a reporter if, because she had suffered subsequent hard times, she had ever regretted her decision to escape slavery. She answered: “No, I am free, and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.”
From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, Point Austin. We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.