Group determined to preserve memorial for enslaved people in ‘first White House’

Few people have been as involved as Michael Coard in the struggle to bring light to the history of slavery at the nation’s first executive mansion.

Coard, a criminal defense attorney from Philadelphia, co-founded the Avenge The Ancestors Coalition in 2002 after learning about the people George Washington owned during his residency in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797. 

For eight years, Coard and other members of ATAC worked to preserve the history of the nine enslaved Black people who lived and worked in Washington’s Philadelphia home. The President’s House, a memorial located in the Independence Mall area within Philadelphia’s Independence National Historic Park, opened in 2010. The historic park is operated by the National Park Service. 

The outdoor exhibit, which features an area for visitors to see the mansion’s unearthed foundation, video reenactments and illustrated panels about slavery in Pennsylvania, tells the story of the enslaved Black people whom Washington brought to Philadelphia from his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon. They worked as stable hands, nursemaids, cooks and seamstresses in the President’s House. Two of them, Hercules Posey — Washington’s acclaimed chief cook — and Ona Judge — Martha Washington’s personal maid — escaped in 1797 and 1796, respectively.

“You got to know America before you claim to be a proud American, and that’s why this site and sites like it are so important,” Coard said.

The memorial is now in jeopardy after President Donald Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” March 27, which directed Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior Doug Burgum to ensure National Park Service sites “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

Burgum issued a directive May 20 stating he would evaluate Independence Mall and make necessary changes by Sept. 17.

As of press time, no changes have been made to the site. 

Coard said he wasn’t surprised the President’s House caught the Trump administration’s attention.

“Based on the dozens of executive orders he issued in January, we saw where his mindset was toward Black people and Black history,” Coard said. “So, we were bracing ourselves.”

Susan Liebell, Ph.D., professor emerita of political science at St. Joe’s, said she had been speaking to many historians and political scientists since Trump’s executive order. 

“These changes to archives and museums and websites are of concern to me,” Liebell said. “I think they distort our ability to accurately assess historical events.”

Uncovering hidden history 

Construction of the original house began in 1767 and was completed five years later before being given to Willam Penn’s grandson and his wife as a wedding gift. The house had several more famous inhabitants, including British spy Benedict Arnold and Robert Morris (dubbed the “financier of the Revolution”) prior to being used by presidents George Washington and John Adams before the DC-located White House was finished in 1800. By the early 1950s, most of the house had been demolished to construct Independence Mall.

For decades, the legacy of the President’s House was largely forgotten. However, in the early 2000s, during the construction of the Liberty Bell Center, workers uncovered remains of the house.

In January 2002, historian Edward Lawler Jr. wrote an article in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography titled “The President’s House in Philadelphia: The Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark.” Among the article’s main focuses were the function of the house and the roles enslaved people fulfilled in Washington’s early presidency.

Another historian, Gary Nash, Ph.D., amplified Lawler’s article while on a Philadelphia-based national public radio show. Nash suggested learning about the enslaved people who worked in Washington’s Philadelphia home offered the public a new way to reinterpret Washington’s presidency.

Nash connected with Randall Miller, Ph.D., professor emeritus of history at St. Joe’s, and they co-wrote an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that argued the house offered a learning opportunity to understand the role of slavery in the early republic.

Miller said in the earliest days of Washington’s presidency, image and reputation were crucial. The young government, with Washington at its helm, needed an aura about it that people would respect.

“[They] had to, in effect, have a kind of presentation in the house, in the place settings at dinner and all these kinds of things were part of this, creating a sense of respect and even mystique about it that people would respect,” Miller said. “That was made possible by enslaved people.”

The burgeoning discourse in 2002 around the enslaved people in Washington’s home caught Coard’s eye, leading to ATAC’s creation. Coard said one of ATAC’s earliest moves was to send a letter to every Black elected official based in Philadelphia.

“The letter essentially said, ‘Hey, we’re ATAC…We just found out that George Washington enslaved Black people at [the President’s House],” Coard said. “Many of us knew that he had 316 [enslaved people] at his Mount Vernon, Virginia, plantation, but we didn’t know that he had nine right here at America’s first White House. We’d like you all elected officials to do something about it.’”

Ultimately, the city and federal government funded research on the site and its later excavation. Construction on the memorial began in 2009. 

In addition to co-writing the op-ed, Miller became an organizer of a group called the Ad-Hoc Historians, which did their own research on the site. Miller said the combination of historians, activists like ATAC and media attention were crucial to maintaining public interest in the story of the President’s House.

“You got journalists pounding away at it, you’ve got ATAC, especially with protests,” Miller said. “So it’s really a marriage, a welding together, a series of alliances.”

The President’s House memorial opened one year later, in 2010.

Continued activism

Since Trump’s executive order, ATAC has increased its efforts to protect the content at the President’s House from censorship. The group has spent the last month organizing demonstrations, Zoom meetings and rallies, including a silent vigil Sept. 19 when Burgum visited Independence Mall.

Coard said he spends his time before and after work organizing and coordinating with other members of ATAC.

“As corny as that might sound, it’s truly a labor of love,” Coard said. “None of us is getting paid for this, and none of us would take any money for it.”

ATAC isn’t alone. Another organization working to preserve the President’s House in case of content removal is the Data Rescue Project, which offers an online communal folder for users to upload pictures of NPS signs in case they are changed or removed. 

“The point of history is not just to tell happy stories that make some people feel good,” wrote Lynda Kellam, Ph.D., steering committee member of the Data Rescue Project, in an email to The Hawk. “It’s to help us understand how we got to this point in our nation’s story so that we can build a better future for all,”

When Coard was an undergraduate at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania and then a law student at Ohio State University, he never imagined he would dedicate nearly a quarter century of his life to defending the President’s House. But people tell him his ancestors put him through law school in order to be in the position to defend the memorial.

Given all the work Coard and ATAC have put into defending stories of Washington’s enslaved Black people over the past 23 years, Coard said the battle for the President’s house feels personal.

Yet it’s much more, he said.

“This is not a battle to tell Black history,” Coard said. “This is a battle to tell American history properly. So, it’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than ATAC, it’s bigger than any individual organization. This is America, the good, the bad and the ugly.”