Independence National Historical Park
Park History
Sourced
Independence National Historical Park covers more than 51 acres of downtown Philadelphia, and at its center stands the old Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall. In its Assembly Room the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; four days later the Declaration was read aloud to the public for the first time in the square outside. In 1787 fifty-five delegates were sent to Philadelphia, and in the same Assembly Room they created the Constitution — a document, the park’s own brochure says, that failed to adequately address slavery. Congress sat in nearby Congress Hall from 1790 to 1800, while Philadelphia was the nation’s capital, and the First Continental Congress had gathered at nearby Carpenters’ Hall in 1774. [1] [2]
The bell that hung in the State House steeple was first heard in 1753; its inscription reads “Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” In the 1830s anti-slavery groups named it the Liberty Bell; it cracked around 1846. The park’s brochure calls the crack a reminder that liberty is imperfect, hopefully evolving to include those denied full participation. [1] [2]
Congress created the park on June 28, 1948. The park was made by creating public parks and open green space around the founding-era landmarks, clearing later commercial buildings, drawing on the City Beautiful movement and the colonial revival of Williamsburg, and in the 1950s and 1960s park architects, archeologists and historians working on Independence Hall developed restoration methods the Park Service still treats as a model. Independence Hall was named a World Heritage Site in 1979. [2] [3] [1]
Women
Lucretia Mott and other activists of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society wrote for The Liberty Bell, the Boston abolitionist annual that in 1839 first gave the bell its name in print and for twenty years used it as an anti-slavery symbol, John Paige’s special history study for the park records. On July 4, 1876, Susan B. Anthony gave the first public reading of a women’s declaration of rights here, urging suffrage. And on August 2, 1954, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs gave the Park Service $209,541.82 raised nationwide to restore and refurnish the first floor of Independence Hall — by the park’s account the largest single sum ever applied to the building to that time. [4] [2] [5]
Black history
Ona Judge hid among the free Black Philadelphians she had befriended — part of a city the brochure describes as home to people fleeing slavery and free people of African descent. The house itself was torn down in 1832, and for some fifty years after Independence Mall was built the site lay under a lawn and a women’s restroom, marked only by a small brass plaque. In 2002 independent scholar Edward Lawler Jr. showed that Washington had ordered a smokehouse on the lot altered as housing for his “stablepeople.” Lawler judged it most likely that the order was carried out and the building housed enslaved stable workers, and he pointed out that visitors would pass over that site on entering the new Liberty Bell Center; in the controversy that followed, attorney Michael Coard founded the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, and on July 3, 2002, some five hundred mostly African American protesters demanded a memorial. The 2007 excavation uncovered the kitchen where Hercules cooked and drew more than 300,000 visitors in four months; the park then built its first community-based exhibit there, interpreting race and slavery. [3] [1] [2]
Slavery
Partly beneath today’s Liberty Bell Center stood the President’s House, the executive mansion of George Washington (1790–1797) and John Adams (1797–1800). The Washingtons brought nine enslaved Africans from Mount Vernon to work there at various times: Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules, Joe Richardson, Moll, Ona (Oney) Judge, Paris and Richmond. Under Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Law of 1780, the park’s 2009 excavation report (revised 2023) explains, enslaved people became free after a six-month stay in the state, so Washington rotated them back to Virginia — a practice the report says itself violated Pennsylvania law, which was not enforced. In the spring of 1796 Ona Judge walked out while the family sat down to dinner and escaped to New Hampshire; she died free in 1848. Hercules, the chef, escaped from Mount Vernon on February 22, 1797. Adams, the brochure notes, never owned slaves. [3] [1]
Sources
- NPSHistory.com: Independence National Historical Park archive page — overview (from the 2018 NPS brochure) and establishment block
- Foundation Document, Independence National Historical Park (NPS, September 2017)
- Mooney, Levin, Wuebber, Jeppson, Roberts, LaRoche & Brauer, The Archeology of Freedom and Slavery: Excavations at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia (URS/NPS/City of Philadelphia, 2009; rev. 2023)
- Paige, The Liberty Bell of Independence National Historical Park: A Special History Study (NPS Denver Service Center, undated, c. 1985), ch. on the bell as an abolitionist symbol
- Lee & Anderson, The Role of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in the Restoration and Refurnishing of Independence Hall 1953–1963 (NPS)
PARTIALLY RESTORED, Court-Ordered: 12 exhibit panels documenting slavery at the President's House
On this very ground in Philadelphia stood the President's House — the executive mansion where George Washington lived while governing a nation founded on liberty. What the exhibit revealed, and what the administration removed, is that Washington brought nine enslaved people from Mount Vernon to work in this house: Oney Judge, Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules Posey, Joe Richardson, Moll, Paris, and Richmond.
Washington secretly rotated these individuals between Pennsylvania and Virginia every six months to exploit a loophole in Pennsylvania's 1780 Gradual Abolition Act, which would have freed any enslaved person who resided in the state for six continuous months. In 1796, Oney Judge escaped from this house and fled to New Hampshire. Washington pursued her for years but she was never recaptured. She lived as a free woman until her death in 1848.
In January 2025, the National Park Service physically dismantled the entire exhibit — all 30 individual signs and displays. After public outcry and a lawsuit by the City of Philadelphia (City of Philadelphia v. Doug Burgum), a federal judge — citing George Orwell's 1984 — ordered the panels restored. CBS News reported that during a court inspection, the 34 panels had not been destroyed, but certain panels "exhibited damage." The judge issued an order preventing any further removals or changes.
On February 19, 2026, 16 of the 30 signs were restored under the court order. Further restoration was paused on February 20, leaving 14 signs still removed — including panels on Chef Hercules, Oney Judge's escape, the Fugitive Slave Act, and three "History Lost and Found" panels documenting the archaeological discovery of the site. This remains the only known case where removed content has been partially returned.
Why this matters: The President's House exhibit was created after a 24-year campaign by Philadelphia's African American community to ensure that the story of slavery at the seat of presidential power would not be erased. Over 3 million people visit this site each year. Of 30 original signs, 16 have been restored and 14 remain removed.
- “The President's House Site” — restored
- “The Executive Branch” — restored
- “The Dirty Business of Slavery” — removed
- “Life Under Slavery” — removed
- “Chef Hercules” — removed
- “Oney Escapes!” — removed
- “I and My Household” — restored
- “I am free now” — removed
- “Refuge in the Country” — restored
- “Death Carts” — restored
- “I will fear no Evil” — restored
- “Promoting the Abolition of Slavery” — restored
- “Burn this treaty to Hell!” — restored
- “We shall come to a civil war” — restored
- “The Keeper of the House” — restored
- “Mount Vernon to Philadelphia” — removed
- “Washington's Death and a Renewed Hope for Freedom” — partially restored
- “Contagion and Liberty” — removed
- “The opener of the way” — removed
- “A Day of Reciprocity” — removed
- “Freedom might be too great a temptation” — restored
- “Awarding a Peace Medal” — removed
- “Strengthening Ties with the United States” — removed
- “An Act respecting fugitives from Justice” — restored
- “Suppressing the Opposition” — restored
- “...is hereby empowered to seize such fugitives” — removed
- “History Lost and Found: Making History” — removed
- “History Lost and Found: Archeology” — removed
- “History Lost and Found: Exposed, Contradictions, Discoveries” — removed
- “The House and the People Who Worked and Lived In It” — restored
- “Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)” — removed
- “[touchscreen at entrance to Independence Hall]” — removed
- Portrait description; reason: Disparages Americans past or living; now: In the park
- President's House Site exhibit panels (×34); reason: Disparages Americans past or living; now: Mixed glass panels restored; large format metal panels were damaged and not restored, pending active litigation
The administration flagged this panel because it states President George Washington was “Concerned about his public image” when he had his steward, Frederick Kitt, sign a newspaper advertisement seeking the return of an escaped enslaved woman. The government questioned: “Do we know that Washington's motivation to have Kitt sign the advertisement was to uphold his reputation?”
The administration flagged this panel because it describes methods slaveholders used to “break the spirits” of those they held in slavery, including “whipping, depriving of food, clothing, and shelter; as well as beating, torturing, and raping those they enslaved.”
The administration flagged this panel because it states that enslaved Africans were “brutally kidnapped and forcibly brought to America.”
The administration flagged this artwork because it depicts “Washington's hands in the foreground; one with the Fugitive Slave Act, the other with a quill signing the Act, in the background a posse of white men are depicted with clubs and guns shooting at four black men (one who has been shot in the head) presumably escaping from slavery.”
The administration flagged this panel because it uses words like “profoundly disturbing” to describe Washington transporting enslaved people, and calls the site's history both “admirable and deplorable.”
FLAGGED FOR REVIEW: Exhibit panels (1 items)
On July 4, 1956, Independence National Historical Park was officially established in Philadelphia, protecting the birthplace of American democracy where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.
Congress authorized the park in 1948 in response to local advocacy, and the National Park Service began administration in 1950. Independence Hall, Congress Hall, and the Liberty Bell are the centerpieces, symbolizing America's founding ideals. The park encompasses over 51 acres in downtown Philadelphia, transforming an aging commercial district into preserved historical spaces.
The park submitted Liberty Bell Center panels explaining how abolitionists adopted the bell and its inscription, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants Thereof,” as a symbol and gave it the name “Liberty Bell.” The panels also mention George Washington holding enslaved people while serving as president in Philadelphia and, in the park’s description, call out the systemic and violent racism and sexism of the post-Reconstruction era. [NPS review record]
Elsewhere in the park, the President’s House exhibit was physically removed and then partly restored by federal court order; see the separate President’s House entry. [NPS review record]
Why this matters: The bell got its name from people fighting slavery, and the panels flagged here say so. The park’s own brochure notes that the Constitution drafted in Independence Hall failed to adequately address slavery. Telling visitors who named the Liberty Bell, and why, is part of telling the founding honestly. [NPSHistory.com] [NPSHistory.com 2]
Please review the following panels in the Liberty Bell Center to confirm alignment with SO:
Two panels tell of how the Liberty Bell's Biblical inscription “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants Thereof,” a verse that in part refers to the freeing of slaves, motivated the abolitionist movement to adopt the Bell as a symbol for their cause and to give it the name “Liberty Bell.” Both panels give background to the growth and support of slavery in the US and the resistance to it, with violence on both sides. Also mentioned: George Washington holding slaves while serving as President of the US in Philadelphia and Independence Hall as a location where the Fugiti...
One section of panels cover the travels of the Bell during the Post-Reconstruction period in the United States. The section contrasts the use of the Liberty Bell as a symbol of universal freedom for the Abolitionist Movement prior to the Civil War. The introduction panel expresses how the same bell became a symbol of reunification after the Civil War as it made several trips around the nation beginning in 1885, including two trips south. It calls out the systemic and violent racism and sexism that existed in the US at that time. Another covers a visit to the Bell by the former President of th...
Photos courtesy Save Our Signs (public domain)
Photographs attached to this park's records in the leaked NPS review database.
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