The building, located across the street from Independence Hall, was home to George Washington for most of his presidency. In addition to his wife, Martha, and others, nine slaves lived there with this nation’ s first“ First Family.” The exhibit the workers were sent to pull down told the stories of these enslaved people.
One of them, Ona( Oney) Judge, fled the President’ s House on May 21, 1796.
Two days later, an ad appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser with these words:“ Absconded from the household of the President of the United States, ONEY JUDGE, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and … about 20 years of age.”
Newspaper advertisement offering a $ 10 reward for the capture of George Washington’ s runaway slave
In 2000, the year of the first presidential election of the 21st century, only 53 percent of the Blacks who were registered to vote cast ballots in that year’ s contest. Eight years later, with Obama as the Democratic Party’ s candidate, 69 percent of Black voters went to the polls. That was a jump of 16 percent. As a percentage of eligible voters, the turnout of Black voters in 2008 exceeded that of White voters.
The Black voter turnout in 2008 breathed life into the words Jesse Jackson uttered during his 1984 Democratic National Convention speech:“ Hands that once picked cotton now pick presidents.”
Obama was elected to a second term in the White House in 2012.
As in his first election, Obama won the backing of more than 90 percent of the nation’ s Black voters, a majority of Hispanic and Asian voters, and a minority share of the white vote( 43 percent in 2008 and 39 percent in 2012). Barack Obama’ s election was a remarkable turn of events that must have caused a rumbling in the graves of generations of Blacks whose lives were shackled by slavery and a century of Jim Crow laws.
On Thursday, January 22, 2026, in an act that a federal judge would later say appeared to have been dictated by George Orwell’ s Ministry of Truth, workers from the National Park Service showed up outside the President’ s House in Philadelphia and began tearing down an exhibit.
President Washington offered a $ 10 reward for the return of his runaway slave.
The removal of the exhibit, which was created over two decades ago, was the result of an executive order from President Donald Trump called“ Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It directed the Department of Interior to remove exhibits that promote a negative portrayal of American history. On February 19, 2026, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore the exhibit.
“ History,” as Pulitzer Prize winning author Nikole Hannah-Jones says,“ is memory” – and there is much for Black people to remember about the history of our country. ■
Tonyaa Weathersbee, an award-winning journalist, is the Hardin Chair of Excellence in the University of Memphis’ Department of Journalism and Strategic Media.
34