https://wildhunt.org/2026/02/history-cannot-be-scraped-clean-court-orders-oney-judges-story-and-slavery-exhibits-restored.html

History Cannot Be “Scraped Clean”: Court Orders Oney Judge’s Story and Slavery Exhibits Restored
Manny Moreno By Manny Moreno

PHILADELPHIA – In a stunningly worded 40-page opinion released February 16, 2026, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ordered the Trump administration to immediately restore slavery-related exhibits removed from the President’s House site at Independence National Historical Park. The case, City of Philadelphia v. Burgum, marks a significant judicial intervention yet in the growing struggle over how American history is presented in public spaces.

Judge Rufe granted a preliminary injunction requiring the National Park Service (NPS) to reinstall all removed panels and video exhibits and prohibiting further changes without mutual written agreement between the City of Philadelphia and the federal government. The ruling came after the NPS removed 34 educational panels and deactivated videos discussing slavery at the site built atop the foundation of George Washington’s Philadelphia residence.

In language that was rhetorically striking, legally ambitious, and unusually direct in tone, Rufe compared the government’s actions to George Orwell’s 1984, warning against a regime where history can be “scraped clean and reinscribed.” She wrote that the government’s claim to erase or alter historical accounts at national monuments echoed Orwell’s dystopian vision. “The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees,” the George W. Bush appointee wrote. “And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power.”

The President’s House site interprets the “paradox” of liberty and bondage at the nation’s founding. George Washington enslaved people both at this Philadelphia residence and at Mount Vernon, where exhibits, reconstructed enslaved quarters, and burial grounds acknowledge that history. In Philadelphia, the exhibits told the stories of nine enslaved Africans, including Oney Judge, who escaped in 1796 and later lived free in New Hampshire.

Rufe emphasized that Oney Judge’s story is central to the site’s inclusion in the Underground Railroad “Network to Freedom,” created under a 1998 federal law. Removing that interpretation, she wrote, undermines the very statutory basis for the site’s designation.

The removals followed President Donald Trump’s March 27, 2025, executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order directed the Interior Department to eliminate displays that promote what it described as “corrosive ideology” and narratives portraying the United States as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” It specifically referenced Independence National Historical Park, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.