‘Stand up, fight back, and resist’: Activist who helped shape President’s House rallies new fight after the site was dismantled

Nearly a quarter century ago, Black activists fought relentlessly to memorialize the lives of nine people enslaved at the first presidential mansion. On Saturday, the leader of that decade-long battle rallied a new fight.

Michael Coard, an attorney and founding member of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition (ATAC), pledged to restore the slavery memorial at the President’s House Site on Independence Mall and said his group will not concede on the exhibit’s location or its content, despite efforts from federal officials to sanitize and erase the outdoor museum.

» READ MORE: The slavery exhibits at the President’s House have been removed following Trump administration push

“Our goal, first and foremost, is to remain at that site — intact,” Coard told a roughly 60-person crowd at an unrelated event at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. “There’s only one first White House where Black people were enslaved. … There are no alternatives.”

This week, the National Park Service dismantled all the educational displays and illustrations, including those titled “Life Under Slavery” and “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” at the memorial on the corner of Sixth and Market Streets. The site was the latest casualty in President Donald Trump’s push to remove all displays and other content that he has said “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” from federal land — what some have called an attempt to whitewash history.

» READ MORE: Here are the signs the Trump administration removed from Independence Park

While the sudden removal of the exhibits elicited shock from passersby and ire from local leaders and stakeholders, Coard said he saw it coming: This summer, 13 items at the site were flagged for review as part of Trump’s executive order and federal authorities set a mid-September deadline to change or remove the disputed content at national parks nationwide. The September deadline passed and the site remained unaltered, but its fate was still in limbo.

» READ MORE: What just happened at the President’s House?

Coard, whose group has been stewarding and championing the exhibits since 2002, said Avenging the Ancestors is mounting a multipronged response; he alluded to a legal strategy but would not elaborate. (Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing that the removal of the exhibits is unlawful.)

There has been an outpouring of sorrow and appreciation for the exhibits and anger at Trump’s administration. On Friday, small tokens — a rose, a bouquet of flowers, and a sign that read “Slavery was real” — were left at the site. A group of teachers on their lunch break taped up dozens of posters reading “Learn all history” and “History is real.” The signs were gone as of Saturday morning; by the afternoon, new tributes had spawned. One event promoted online encouraged Philadelphia artists to craft replicas of the removed displays.

“We support and commend those who are doing something,” Coard told The Inquirer after the event, which honored the inaugural graduates of Mother Bethel’s “Freedom School,” a 10-week course on African American history. “If that’s simply liking a social media post about resisting, do that. If it’s taking signs and other items down to the site, do that. … Stand up, fight back, and resist.”

» READ MORE: Why was the slavery exhibit removed from the President’s House? A historian gives context.

On Saturday, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) took to social media to weigh in against the National Park Service’s dismantling of the exhibits, marking a rare break from Trump.

“Our history is our history. It is our willingness to learn from it that makes America exceptional and the greatest country on Earth, on our journey to become a more perfect union,” McCormick wrote on X, responding to The Inquirer’s reporting.

In the same post, McCormick said he also invoked this reasoning when he opposed renaming military bases, like Fort Bragg, after Confederate generals and the park service’s proposal (which was later retracted) to remove a statue of William Penn in Philadelphia in 2024.

Fort Bragg was named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg before former President Joe Biden’s administration changed it to Fort Liberty. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth changed it back to Bragg, but in honor of Roland L. Bragg, whom the Defense Department describes as a “World War II hero,” NPR reported.

McCormick appears to be one of the first Pennsylvania Republicans — if not the only one — to weigh in against the exhibits’ removal. Democratic lawmakers across the region have also expressed their disapproval.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) called the NPS decision “deeply wrong and misguided” in a statement emailed to The Inquirer on Saturday.

“America is the best country in the world. Our history is filled with the greatest sacrifices to the most awful chapters. Teach all of it,” Fetterman said.

The erasure of the site — which captured the somber paradox of a young America that exalted freedom for some but deprived others /of it — comes ahead of the country’s Semiquincentennial celebrations, when Philadelphia will be in the national spotlight.

The Rev. Carolyn Cavaness of Mother Bethel said it was a blow to her heart to see the exhibits removed. Mother Bethel is a hub for activism and the oldest church property in the United States to be owned continually by Black people. Bishop Richard Allen, the former slave, educator, and Methodist lay preacher who founded the church, was featured at the site.

“There’s something about the full story being told, and for that piece of this story to just be ripped away, I think it even mobilizes … preserving, protecting, sharing our story and our contributions,” Cavaness said. “It just ups the ante.”

» READ MORE: Independence Park employees are being told to give evasive answers after removal of slavery exhibits