About This Case Study

On Philadelphia's Independence Mall, a short walk from the Liberty Bell, an open-air installation marks the site of the President's House — the executive mansion where George Washington lived while Philadelphia was the nation's capital, and where he held at least nine enslaved people, among them Oney Judge, who escaped to freedom. Opened in 2010, the site was unusual among national memorials for placing slavery and freedom side by side at the center of the founding story. In 2026, the interpretation of slavery at the site became the subject of a public controversy. As the coverage gathered here reports, the slavery interpretation was removed or altered; activists organized in opposition; a court ordered its return, in a ruling that invoked George Orwell's 1984; and a later ruling cleared the way for its replacement — an outcome some described as a victory for the Trump administration's approach to how race and slavery are presented at federal sites. This case study works with that reporting to examine a contest over public memory as it unfolds.

The unit's concepts give the controversy a precise frame. "Racism of omission" names the racial work done not by acts of commission — slurs, statutes, overt exclusions — but by what is not done: not taught, not funded, not collected, not displayed. Charles Mills's account of white ignorance describes how a society can be organized to not-know its own history, sustained by a selective collective memory and amnesia that lets domination continue with a clean conscience. Removing or muting the interpretation of slavery at a founding site is, in these terms, a candidate instance of omission in real time — a decision about what a public is invited to remember and what it is permitted to forget. The analytical move is to read an absence as an action: to ask who decided, what justifications were offered, what a visitor now does and does not encounter, and what the episode reveals about how public memory is governed.

Before You Begin

Have ready:

• SRL Reports (PBS NewsHour), "Why Activists Are Fighting the Removal of a Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia" — a video report to orient you.
• CNN, "Slavery Exhibit Returns to Philadelphia Museum Following Judge's Orders That Cited Orwell's '1984'" — reporting on the litigation and the court-ordered return.
• Organization of American Historians, "Statement on the Freedom and Slavery Exhibit Removal at Independence National Historical Park" — a professional historians' response.
• WHYY, "Court Ruling Clears Way to Replace Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia at President's House Site" — reporting on the ruling permitting replacement.
• The National Park Service's own interpretive materials for the President's House site, where archived, for the language the site used before the change.
• A note-taking surface — paper, a document, or a shared doc if you are working in a group.

A note on currency: this case study describes a dispute that was active and moving through the courts in 2026. The status of the exhibit, the litigation, and any federal directives behind it were unresolved as this was written; check for developments since, and bear in mind that the coverage gathered here was produced at particular moments in an unfolding story.

Before you read, write down, in a sentence or two each:

• When you have visited a historic site, monument, or museum, what story did it tell — and what, in hindsight, did it leave out?
• Can removing or not telling a history be a racial act, even when no one says anything about race? How would you tell?

The Exercise

Phase 1: What Happened (8–10 minutes)

Begin with the PBS report to get the shape of the controversy, then read across the other coverage. Without yet analyzing it, establish the basic sequence in your own words: what the President's House site interpreted before 2026, what was removed or changed, who objected, what the courts did, and where matters stood when the coverage was written. Write a short, neutral account — four or five sentences — that someone unfamiliar with the case could follow. Resist, for now, the urge to take a side; the analysis comes later.

For groups: each member drafts the account individually, then the group reconciles them into one agreed timeline.

Phase 2: Close Reading — The Decision and Its Defenders (10–12 minutes)

A change to a public history is also an argument about what the public should know. Read more closely, holding the competing accounts side by side, and work through:

1. The justifications. What reasons were given for removing or altering the slavery interpretation, and by whom? Distinguish the stated rationale (for example, appeals to balance, accuracy, cost, or proper scope) from what critics argued the change actually accomplished.
2. What the visitor now encounters. Using the coverage, describe as concretely as you can what a visitor to the site would and would not learn after the change — the specific content of the omission. What disappears from the founding story when the enslaved people of the President's House are muted or removed?
3. The competing accounts. Lay out how supporters of the change and its opponents — including the historians' organization — each frame what is at stake. Where do they actually disagree: about the facts, about whose history belongs at a national site, or about who should decide?

For groups: assign the justifications to some members and the opposition to others, then reconvene and compare.

Phase 3: Applying the Frame — Racism of Omission (8–10 minutes)

Now bring the unit's concepts to bear. Holding the controversy against the idea of racism of omission and Mills's account of white ignorance, ask:

• Does this episode fit the concept of racism of omission? What is omitted, and what racial work does the omission do — what is a public invited to forget, and with what consequence?
• Omission rarely has a single author. Among the decision-makers, agencies, and officials involved, who can be said to be responsible, and what makes responsibility for an absence harder to assign than responsibility for an act?
• Where does the "collective amnesia" frame fit well, and where does it strain? The removal was loudly contested and litigated — not silent. Does a public, adversarial fight over memory complicate the idea of omission as quiet forgetting, or is the fight itself part of how memory gets governed?

For groups: spend the first half on the first two questions together; spend the second on where the frame strains.

Phase 4: The Pattern Beyond One Site (optional, 5–7 minutes)

Find one other contemporary instance in which a history touching race was removed, revised, or suppressed — a monument taken down or defended, a curriculum changed, a museum exhibit altered, a website edited. Analyze it briefly: what was omitted, who decided, what justification was offered, and what the omission accomplishes. Does your example confirm the reading of omission as a racial mechanism, or complicate it?

Closing Reflection

In two or three sentences, complete this thought:

What was removed from the President's House site is, in the unit's terms, best described as __________. Reading the episode as "racism of omission" rather than ordinary administrative policy reveals __________. The part of this analysis I find hardest to hold steady is __________.

Write the most specific version you can; the value is in naming exactly what is contested and exactly where the frame reaches its limit.

A Note on Modes

Solo mode. Work through the phases in order, keeping brief notes. The neutral timeline from Phase 1 and the "what the visitor now encounters" analysis from Phase 2 are the central artifacts.

Group mode (3–6 people). Designate a timekeeper. Phase 1 produces a shared timeline; Phase 2 works well divided between the decision's justifications and its opposition; Phase 3 benefits from full-group discussion. If time is short, the closing reflection can be individual writing after the session.

After the Case Study

• For the history the site interprets, see Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Atria, 2017), which recovers the life of one of the people enslaved at the President's House.
• For the concepts at the center of this analysis, return to the unit's Key Scholarship: Rory Kramer, Victor Ray, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's introduction to the "Racism of Omission" special issue of Social Problems, and Charles Mills's "White Ignorance."
• The episode belongs to a wider contemporary politics of public memory — the removal and defense of monuments, the regulation of how slavery and race are taught and displayed, and disputes over what national sites are for; readers pursuing the topic can follow that scholarship to ask how a society's record of its own past is made and unmade.