Philadelphia sues Trump administration over removal of long-standing slavery exhibit from historic park

(CNN) — The City of Philadelphia is suing the Trump administration after the National Park Service removed a long-standing exhibit on slavery in the city’s Independence National Historical Park.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court Thursday against the US Interior Department, Secretary Doug Burgum, the park service and its acting director Jessica Bowron, asks for a judge to issue a preliminary injunction to return the displays.

The exhibit, located at the President’s House Site where Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived, features displays honoring individuals enslaved by Washington and a historical timeline of American slavery.

Video from CNN-affiliate WPVI shows work crews dismantling large display panels at the site on Thursday afternoon.

“The interpretive displays relating to enslaved persons at President’s House are an integral part of the exhibit and removing them would be a material alteration to the exhibit,” attorneys for the city said in the filing.

The exhibit’s removal comes as the Trump administration continues its campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with the president’s political directives.

In an executive order signed last March, President Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of advancing “corrosive ideology,” specifically citing Independence Park, and called upon the Interior secretary to remove content within the department’s jurisdiction that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

“Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” the order states. “This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

In the lawsuit, attorneys for the city wrote, “Without notice to the City of Philadelphia, the National Park Service has removed artwork and informational displays at the President’s House site referencing slavery, presumably pursuant to the mandate in the Executive Order.”

“Defendants have provided no explanation at all for their removal of the historical, educational displays at the President’s House site, let alone a reasoned one,” the attorneys said.

CNN has reached out to the White House; the National Park Service; and Interior Department, which oversees NPS, for comment.

CNN has also reached out to Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson slammed the removal, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

“Removing the exhibits is an effort to whitewash American history. History cannot be erased simply because it is uncomfortable,” he said in a statement.

Michael Coard, founding member of the advocacy group “Avenging the Ancestors Coalition” that helped installed the exhibit in 2010, in a social media post called the removal “outrageous and blatantly racist.”

The Trump administration has imposed the president’s views on other US cultural and historical institutions, purging materials focused on diversity.

Last year, the American Battle Monuments Commission, a small, little-known federal agency, took down a cemetery display in the Netherlands that commemorated the contributions of African American WWII soldiers and highlighted the discrimination they faced.

Trump also escalated his attacks against Smithsonian museums last August, after the White House ordered a review of Smithsonian museums and exhibits to ensure alignment with the president’s directives on what should and shouldn’t be displayed.

Trump said in a Truth Social post at the time, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

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