Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro filed an amicus brief on Tuesday in support of the City of Philadelphia’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s removal of an exhibit about slavery at the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.
That exhibit, entitled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” served as a memorial to the nine enslaved people who worked at the President’s House Site, where George Washington lived for the majority of his presidency. (The White House wasn’t completed until 1800, during John Adams’s presidency.) Other panels of the exhibit discussed the slave trade and slave economy, according to the New York Times.
Independence National Historical Park, which also includes Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, is managed by the National Park Service. The Interior Department removed the exhibit last week, citing President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order in which he listed Independence National Historical Park as being subjected to the “corrosive ideology” of acknowledging the historical accuracy of slavery in this country and that US Presidents owned slaves by falsely calling it “historical revision.”
In a statement to the Times, the Interior Department said that it had conducted a review of interpretative materials at Independence National Historical Park and was “now taking action to remove or revise interpretive materials in accordance with the Order.”
The City of Philadelphia’s suit claims that it has had an agreement with the National Park Service since 2006 that “requires parties to meet and confer if there are to be any changes to an exhibit,” per a report by CBS News. The suit adds that NPS and the Interior Department “did not engage with the city and do not have the city’s approval to make unilateral changes to the President’s House exhibit.” The suit seeks to have the exhibit reinstated.
Shapiro’s amicus brief supports Philadelphia’s suit in order to “defend the integrity of shared governance at nationally significant historic sites, and reaffirm the Commonwealth’s commitment to preserving accurate, inclusive history,” according to a release by the governor’s office. In filing the brief, the release continues, Shapiro is “continuing his Administration’s work to stand up for Pennsylvania communities, protect local authority, and ensure that history is preserved — not erased.”
In a statement, Shapiro said, “Donald Trump will take any opportunity to rewrite and whitewash our history — but he picked the wrong city and the wrong Commonwealth. In Pennsylvania, we learn from our history, even when it’s painful. We don’t erase it or pretend it didn’t happen. Because when we know where we’ve been, we can chart a better course for the future. Those displays aren’t just signs — they represent our shared history, and if we want to move forward as a nation, we have to be willing to tell the full story of where we came from.”
