02/05/2026
Also now erased at the President's House/Slavery Memorial is the interpretative signage documenting the public’s successful insistence on, and involvement with, the 2007 excavation. That public involvement was a unique exploration in community history and national heritage–and important, it exemplified and demonstrated the importance of engaged citizenship in our Democracy.
Specifically, ATAC and other community stakeholders used their freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech rights to protest their suppressed history and employed their rights of the freedom to petition to direct action by their elected officials. By demanding a say in what was to be done at the site, these activists deployed rights codified in the Constitution, a document debated and signed in nearby Independence Hall, and its amendments—rights denied to their metaphorical, and in many cases, actual ancestors. In doing so, these engaged citizens moved the U.S. government and helped transform the nation’s historical narrative–the history we tell ourselves about ourselves.
With the removal of the signage referencing the public involvement, visitors are no longer aware that they are standing in the exact spot where the first electorate would come to see their first elected president, and that they are only standing at this spot today because a concerned group of citizens used their rights to make the government address the fact that the national story presented at Independence Park left their history out.
The President’s House Site is proving to be as important for racial negotiations about contemporary America as it is about the past. The excavations would not have occurred if it weren’t for the public outcry, and the public’s response to the resulting archeological findings, in turn, reshaped the proposed design of the commemoration that ultimately rose on the site to include the house ruins. Now, both the site’s 1790’s history, and its role in shaping 21st century American history faces erasure through Trump’s ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’ order-- which echos Project 2025’s goals of promoting a celebratory national narrative that erases uncomfortable historical truths.
The connection between past and present resonates unusually strongly at the President’s House Site because of its location within Independence National Historical Park, a place that functions as a veritable shrine to American democracy. the President’s House Site clearly demonstrates the vital role that archeology, Independence Park, and the City of Philadelphia have to play in exploring the nation’s past racial landscape and addressing race and heritage concerns in contemporary America. Community actions today again exemplify and demonstrate the importance of engaged citizenship in our Democracy.
Photo: 2007 Closing ceremony at the end of the excavation.
The archaeological report prepared for the National Park Service and The City of Philadelphia includes the public engagement at the site as a topic. The report is available to download or read for FREE on the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum’s Webpage at https://bit.ly/PresidentsHouseArcheologyReportPAF
